CW3E Welcomes Dr. Peter Gibson

February 20, 2020

Dr. Peter Gibson joined CW3E in February 2020. Originally from New Zealand, he earned a B.S. with a double major in Mathematics and Physical Geography from the University of Otago (2012). His MS thesis (2014), also from the University of Otago, focused on how synoptic weather types influence regional variability and reliability in New Zealand’s wind energy resource. Peter then moved to Australia to complete his doctoral thesis (2017) at the University of New South Wales, where his research focused on better understanding the large-scale drivers of Australian heatwaves in a changing climate. After completing his PhD, Peter moved further abroad to California and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory under supervision of Duane Waliser (2017-2020). During this time, his research focused primarily on drought and atmospheric ridging/blocking across the western United States, including examining sources of predictability and model skill on subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) timescales.

At CW3E, Peter will serve as a Senior Researcher on S2S projects. He will research S2S skill of operational hindcast systems in terms of probabilistic forecasts of atmospheric ridging/blocking and atmospheric rivers. Informed by these skill assessments, he will continue to develop the suite of S2S operational products for the Center. Peter will also test and implement novel machine learning approaches for longer-lead seasonal prediction of drought and atmospheric rivers.