Uma Bhatt elected American Meteorological Society Fellow

The American Meteorological Society announced UAF Professor Uma Bhatt has been elected as an AMS Fellow. Presentation of Bhatt’s award will take place during the AMS annual meeting in January.

"A Fellow shall have made outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their applications during a substantial period of years," according to AMA guidelines. 

Bhatt has been at UAF since 1998 and part of the GI and Atmospheric Sciences department since 2004, promoted to full professor in 2014. She is also associate director for the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, and Ecosystem Studies, which is the new NOAA cooperative institute jointly with the University of Washington and Oregon State University.

“My research specialty is "Climate Variability," Bhatt explains on her website. “It is critical to understand the natural variability of the climate system in order to address climate change due to 'anthropogenic' forcing… The climate is a very complex system and each bit of research we do serves to unravel a small piece of (or sometimes complicate) the climate puzzle.”

“After finishing my BS degree, I joined the U.S. Peace Corps and served as a high school math teacher in Kenya for two years (1983-85). The dramatic drought in East Africa during this time and the amazing atmospheric phenomena I experienced at our rural secondary school made me decide to pursue a graduate degree in Atmospheric Sciences,” Bhatt said. “This has turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made!"

"We are living through a particularly exciting time in atmospheric sciences as our understanding of the components of the earth system (e.g., biology, chemistry, geology, physics, human dimensions, and policy) lead to more holistic thinking for addressing climate change.”