Dr. Courtenay Strong Receives 2008 James R. Holton

Court Strong, who will be joining our Department of Atmospheric Sciences this summer as a new faculty member, received this award at the 2008 AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony.  The award recognizes outstanding research contributions by a junior atmospheric scientist within 3 years of his or her Ph.D.

The complete article can be found in EOS Vol. 90, Number 13, 31 March 2009.

"Citation - Courtenay Strong is truly an exceptional young scientist.  He is intelligent, intellectually curious, and unafraid to tackle new areas as evidenced by his broad background, yet he is focused on the problem at hand.  He has published on subjects as diverse as micrometerology, the tropical and Arctic boundary layers, jet structures and trends, and the effects of atmospheric Rossby wave breaking on the atmospheric general circulation as well as the ocean surface.  On the last topic he made the discovery that the upper tropospheric process of Rossby wave breaking has a deep three-dimensional structure that organizes patterns of surface advection and surface tubulent heat flux, directly affecting the principal pattern of Pacific extratropical sea surface temperature variability, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.  This discovery goes a long way to explaining the part of the "atmospheric bridge" concept that ties processes in the upper troposphere to the ocean surface.  His work exemplifies how pure atmospheric dynamics, the hallmark of Jim Holton's work, remains relevant to climate dynamics and the interaction of the atmosphere with other components of climate system.  This makes him an ideal candidate for the James R. Holton Junior Scientist Award. - Gudrun Magnusdottir, University of California, Irving.

Response - ... I will join the faculty at the University of Utah this fall, and am excited about teaching and building a research group...."