National weather expert to discuss climate change in free talk at Fairfield University | Press Releases

Image: Fairfield University Richard Anthes, Ph.D., president emeritus of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), will deliver "Hurricanes, Weather Patterns andClimate Change: Why a Few Degrees Matter" on Thursday, March 7, 2013, at Fairfield University. Dr. Anthes' lecture, which is free and open to the media and the public, will take place at 5 p.m. in the DiMenna-Nyselius Library multimedia room.

The University's chapter of Sigma Xi, the scientific research society, is proud to present Dr. Anthes, a highly regarded atmospheric scientist, author, educator and administrator. Refreshments will be available.

The global climate is expected to warm several degrees Celsius in the next 100 years. A few degrees does not sound like much, so why should people be concerned? This talk looks at how climate change and changes in weather patterns are related, and, in particular how hurricanes - like Sandy, which caused so much destruction in the tri-state region - may change in a warmer and wetter world.

Dr. Anthes served as the fifth president of UCAR from 1988 to January 2012. He has known he wanted to be a meteorologist from a very young age and, as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he was a student trainee for the U.S. Weather Bureau at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the summers. While continuing through to his Ph.D. at Wisconsin, he discovered researching devastating and costly weather phenomena interested him, and he wrote both his master's and doctoral theses on related issues.

He started his teaching career at The Pennsylvania State University in the 1970s and began his tenure at NCAR in 1981, when he became director of NCAR's Atmospheric Analysis and Prediction Division. Dr. Anthes was elected as an American Meteorological Society (AMS) Fellow in 1979, and he has received prestigious awards from AMS over the years for his contributions to theoretical and modeling studies.

Dr. Anthes places a high value on education at all levels in all countries. In 1996, he initiated the highly successful SOARS program (Significant Opportunities in Atmospheric Research and Science), which won the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.

The DiMenna-Nyselius Library is located on the campus of Fairfield University at 1073 North Benson Road in Fairfield, Connecticut.