Kalnay, Eugenia
Distinguished University Professor
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Atmospheric and Oceanic Science
Atmospheric and Oceanic Science
3431 Computer and Space Sciences Building
BACKGROUND
Prior to her coming to UMD, Eugenia Kalnay was Branch Head at NASA Goddard, and later the Director of the Environmental Modeling Center (EMC, ex Development Division) of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP, ex NMC), National Weather Service (NWS) from 1987 to 1997. During those ten years there were major improvements in the NWS models' forecast skill. Many successful projects such as the 60+years NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis (the paper on this Reanalysis has been cited over 10,000 times), seasonal and interannual dynamical predictions, the first operational ensemble forecasting, 3-D and 4-D variational data assimilation, advanced quality control, and coastal ocean forecasting. EMC became a pioneer in both the fundamental science and the practical applications of numerical weather prediction.
EDUCATION
- Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971
HONORS AND AWARDS
- WMO/IMO Prize for 2009, see talk Population and Climate Change: A Proposal (also in Spanish)
- Member of the National Academy of Engineering (1996)
- Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea (2000)
- Distinguished University Professor, UMD (2001)
- Eugenia Brin Professor in Data Assimilation (2008)
- Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Buenos Aires (2008)
- Corresponding member of the Argentine National Academy of Physical Sciences (2003)
- Fellow of AGU (2005), AAAS (2006), AMS (1983)
- UMD-wide Kirwan Award (2006)
- Robert E. Lowry Chair, School of Meteorology, U. of Oklahoma (1998)
- NASA medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement (1981)
- Two Department of Commerce Gold and one Silver Medal
- Discovery Magazine selected her Nature paper as a top 100 science news of 2003 (see feature in International Association for Urban Climate newsletter)
- The Reanalysis paper of 1996 is the most cited paper in all geosciences (more that 10 thousand citations)
- Lorenz AGU 2012 Lecture
- 2015 AMS Joanne Simpson Mentorship Award for For effectively mentoring many early career scientists, with her unstinting generosity of time and attention in providing advice, encouragement, leadership, and inspiration
- 2015 AMS Honorary Member Award
- 2015: AMS Eugenia Kalnay Symposium
Current research interests of Dr. Kalnay are in numerical weather prediction, data assimilation, predictability and ensemble forecasting, coupled ocean-atmosphere modeling and climate change and sustainability. Zoltan Toth and Eugenia Kalnay introduced the breeding method for ensemble forecasting. She is also the author (with Ross Hoffman and Wesley Ebisuzaki) of other widely used ensemble methods known as Lagged Averaged Forecasting and Scaled LAF. Her book, Atmospheric Modeling, Data Assimilation and Predictability (Cambridge University Press, 2003) sold out within a year, is now on its fifth printing and was published in Chinese (2005) and in Korean (2012). A second edition is in preparation. She has received numerous awards, including the 2009 IMO Prize of the World Meteorological Organization, and is a member of the UN Scientific Advisory Board on Sustainability created by the UN Secretary General.
- Application of coupled breeding to ensemble forecasting and data assimilation Yang et al., 2008, J.of C., revised
- Ensemble Kalman Filter: Current Status and Potential Book Chapter
- International Association for Urban Climate features our work
- Coarse analysis by weight interpolation in the LETKF Yang et al., 2009, QJRMS, revised
- Land-use and Land-cover impact on the US temperature trends Fall et al, 2009
- Data assimilation in a coupled system Ballabrera et al., 2009
- In the midst of chaos, good predictions
- Analysis sensitivity to obs and cross-validation
- Use of Breeding to Detect and Explain Instabilities in the Global Ocean aux.material
- Accelerating spin-up in EnKF: Running in Place
- Handling nonlinearity and non-Gaussianity: Yang-Kalnay-Hunt (in press, MWR)
- Comparison of methods to deal with model errors in EnKF
- Accelerating spin-up RIP,Kalnay-Yang, QJRMS, 2010
- Balance and Ensemble Kalman Filter Localization Techniques MWR, Greybush et al 2010
- Localization of Variables Kang et al., 2011, JGR
- Human and Nature DYnamical model (HANDY), J. Ecological Economics, HANDY Paper
- Elsevier Q&A on HANDY, (J. Ecological Economics), HANDY Paper Q&As
- Ensemble Forecast Sensitivity to Observations (EFSO): a simpler formulation (Tellus, 2012)
- Ensemble Forecast Sensitivity to Observations (EFSO): Ota et al., 2013, submitted Ota et al.
- Effective Assimilation of Precipitation: Lien et al., 2013, submitted Lien et al.
View a complete publications list here.
Changing the Odds
New NSF-funded UM program seeks to advance women faculty in science, engineering.National Academy of Engineering (NAE)
- World Meteorological Organization Member