EESI Environmental Scholar Keeps His Eye on Hurricanes

At the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in January, he presented his research identifying three climate predictors that had the most correlation with tropical cyclone activity.

“We looked at about 10 factors, but the three most critical were Atlantic main development region sea-surface temperatures, the El Niño/Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation,” said Kozar, an EESI Environmental Scholar.

Kozar also is first author on a paper detailing his research which has been submitted to the Journal of Climate. His co-authors include Michael Mann, Kozar’s adviser; Suzana Camargo, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University; and James Kossin, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (Madison, Wisc.).

The New Jersey native is building on that research for his thesis, which will use models and climate simulations to create a dataset of synthetic Atlantic tropical cyclones tracks for the past 1,000 years. Some of the goals of this research will be to use the long-term dataset to identify correlations between climate cycles and tropical cyclone counts and to find relationships between tropical cyclone counts and the number of landfalling storms across the basin. He is working with Mann and Kerry Emanuel (MIT).

If he completes his thesis this spring, Kozar will graduate in May with bachelor’s and master’s degrees—and he will have earned both in four years.

While the 1998 hurricane season sparked Kozar’s interest in hurricanes, by middle school, he was watching the Weather Channel, subscribing to weather magazines and making forecasts for friends and family. In 10th grade, he posted his forecasts on his web site and became known in high school for successfully predicting snow days.

Since coming to Penn State, Kozar has honed his forecasting skills thanks to several stints with the National Weather Service’s State College office—first as a volunteer and now as a Hydrometeorological Technician and Aviation Forecaster with NWS’ Student Career Experience Program (SCEP). In that position, he works on research and provides aviation forecasts that focus on specific conditions such as cloud ceiling heights and visibility.

"It can be hard to know when a storm system will come in hour by hour,” said Kozar who writes those forecasts for regional airports in central Pennsylvania.

He also has furthered his knowledge of hurricanes while working for the NWS. As a volunteer at the Mid-Atlantic River Forecast Center, also in State College, he wrote synoptic weather summaries for flood events, many of which were a result of landfalling tropical systems, from the 1980s to today.

Kozar enjoys the challenge of forecasting and makes a point of reviewing the models if one of his forecasts misses the mark.

“No model is right all the time,” he says.

TC Model

Shown above is a plot of observed tropical cyclone counts from one of the most effective statistical
models created by Kozar's undergraduate research with Michael Mann, Suzana Camargo and
James Kossin.

Still, while meteorology is an imperfect science, “it’s more accurate than financial predictions,” he quips. “We get the most hype though because weather affects people’s lives.”

Kozar is considering earning his doctorate and has applied to MIT and Florida State. But he also is mulling over continuing with the National Weather Service.

The EESI Environmental Scholar program provides support to fund research or teaching assistantships for graduate students in these strategic areas: earth systems ecology, climate change and risk, critical zone science, environmental isotope science, and environmental sensors.