Congratulations to Dr. Voss – CW3E Graduate Student Successfully Defends Dissertation

May 7, 2020

The second CW3E PhD student has successfully defended her dissertation. Dr. Kara Voss’ defense was held on Tuesday, May 5, 2020. Her dissertation title is “What makes an Atmospheric River dusty? Spatio-temporal characteristics and drivers of dust in the vicinity of Atmospheric Rivers along the U.S. west coast,” and includes two chapters published in peer-review journals (Voss et al., 2020a,b). Her third chapter will be submitted to the Journal of Geophysics-Atmospheres. Kara’s committee members were Amato Evan (Chair), Jennifer Burney, Mark Jacobsen, Mark Merrifield, Marty Ralph, and Kate Ricke. Funding for Kara’s dissertation came from FIRO and the AR Program, both under PI Marty Ralph.

Kara has been selected to be a Postdoctoral Scholar working with Jennifer Burney at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.

Due to the COVID-19 health crisis, Kara defended her dissertation virtually, which was a first for both CW3E and her advisor, Amato Evan. CW3E is incredibly proud of Kara’s accomplishment, and looks forward to honoring her with an in-person celebration as soon as the health precautions are no longer necessary!!

Kara Voss being introduced by her Committee Chair Amato Even before her dissertation defense via Zoom.

Dr. Voss’s conclusions for her dissertation. Her results help advance our physically-based understanding of the impact of dust on ARs.

Voss, K.K., and A.T. Evan, 2020: A new satellite-based global climatology of dust aerosol optical depth. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 59, 83-102, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-19-0194.1.

Voss, K. K., A.T. Evan, Prather, K.A., and F. Martin Ralph, 2020: Dusty Atmospheric Rivers: Characteristics and Origins. J. Clim., in press.