The University of Oklahoma Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies is proud to announce a new member to its team supporting the ARM Climate Research Facility Data Quality Office.
Austin King is a CIMMS research associate supporting ARM’s DQ Office. King will help advance the mission of the DQ Office by developing and maintaining tools and methods used to improve various DQ analyses of ARM data products. He will also help manage the DQ Office’s undergraduate student analysts.
“Given the large number of datasets the ARM DQ Office must review and evaluate the quality of such — it is extremely important that a fully staffed team be in place,” said Greg McFarquhar, CIMMS director. “When the ARM DQ Office quickly identifies problems with the data, it allows Department of Energy technicians and engineers to make needed repairs or adjustments to insure the high quality data are collected. Such data is invaluable to improving the representation of clouds, aerosols, precipitation and radiation in Earth System Models.”
CIMMS Research Associate Justin Monroe said King makes a great addition to their team supporting operations and research at ARM’s DQ Office because of his unique skill set.
“Some of Austin’s skills include the ability to manipulate, visualize, and compare complex meteorological datasets using Python, and the ability to develop web applications using modern frameworks for both PC and mobile platforms,” said Monroe. “Austin will be a true asset to the ARM program, and we are excited to welcome him back to our team!”
King previously worked with CIMMS and ARM while working on his Bachelor of Science in meteorology at OU. He was a student programmer with a focus on developing new web-based tools. King recently graduated with his Master of Science in atmospheric sciences from the University of North Dakota.
“Austin possesses a unique combination of knowledge and skills in meteorology and software development that we typically don’t find in new hires coming straight out of graduate school,” Monroe said. “Austin showcased many of these skills during his previous stint as a student programmer at the Data Quality Office, and he continued to grow from there while earning his M.S. in atmospheric sciences at UND.”
While working on his master’s, King’s research focused on the inter-comparison of a suite of commonly used reanalysis datasets to determine the datasets respective proficiency in representing severe weather environments. Much of this research is currently in review to be published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.
“As a perfectionist, I enjoy developing tools and applications that both look great and provide maximum functionality – that’s one of the biggest reasons I’m excited to be back with the DQ Office team,” King said.