Dr. Kyle Ahern

Profile

I attended school in the U.S. and earned my doctorate in meteorology at Florida State University in 2019. My disseration used a combination of observations and numerical simulations to examine atmospheric boundary layers of hurricanes in the Atlantic basin. Prior to my dissertation, I wrote theses about deep convective transport of biomass burning emissions in Southeast Asia in 2013 and air-sea surface turbulent flux representation in mesoscale polar lows in 2015. Since graduating, I have worked at the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies at the University of Miami and at the University at Albany.

I leverage various datasets and tools in my work, including hurricane reconnaissance data, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, the NOAA HYSPLIT model, the Unified Forecast System (UFS), and Cloud Model 1 (CM1). I commit to data visualisation using a customised version of GrADS. I enjoy teaching, graphic design, writing, and game development with C++ and SDL.

Research interests

My research interests generally involve cyclones or impactful weather, with my prior research projects focusing on hurricanes, hurricane-like polar lows, synoptic-scale Arctic cyclones, and deep convective events with the potential to loft pollutants from the atmospheric boundary layer into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. I am also interested in idealised modeling, including the development of new idealised configurations in existing community models and the creation of simple models from scratch.

Professional memberships

• American Meteorological Society
• American Geophysical Union