Alex Fierro, Research Scientist (OU CIMMS/NSSL WRDD)
Background:
Ph.D. Atmospheric Physics, University of Oklahoma, 2007
M.S. Atmospheric Physics, University of Oklahoma, 2003
Diplôme de Licence de Mathématiques, University of Geneva, 2000
Experience: Alex grew up in Switzerland, and came to Oklahoma in 2001 to pursue his Master’s degree at OU. He earned both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Norman before taking a position as an NRC Post Doc at the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. Alex worked in Miami for one year, then took an opportunity for additional Post Doc work at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 2009-2010. He returned to Oklahoma in 2010, joining CIMMS/NSSL as a research scientist.
What He Does: Alex has a wide scope of research interests. One of his focuses is on modeling tropical cyclones, tropical convection, and lightning. He also studies radar and lightning data assimilation and he is interested in climate variability. In the past year, his work has been published in the International Journal of Climatology (“Relationships between California rainfall variability and large-scale climate drivers”), Monthly Weather Review (“Impact of storm-scale lightning data assimilation on WRF-ARW precipitation forecasts during the 2013 warm season over the contiguous United States”), and the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences (“Explicitly simulated electrification and lightning within a tropical cyclone based on the environment of Hurricane Isaac (2012)”).
Trivia: Alex has been to every continent except Antarctica, and he speaks five languages – English, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and German! When he is not traveling, he enjoys playing guitar, sports (Ashtanga yoga, basketball, tennis, ping pong, soccer), cooking/baking, mushroom hunting, gardening, hiking, and nature (especially the ocean!). His main dislikes are TV, air conditioning, and fast food chains (or any chains).