CW3E Welcomes Mike Deflorio

November 14, 2018

Dr. Mike DeFlorio joined CW3E on November 1, 2018. He earned a B.S. (cum laude) in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from Cornell University (2009) and a Ph.D. in Oceanography/Climate Science from UCSD-Scripps Institution of Oceanography (2015). His doctoral thesis focused on the interactions of clouds, SST, and aerosols with climate modes of variability, and included an investigation of the relationship between western U.S. extreme precipitation and tropical Pacific climate variability. After completing his Ph.D., Mike went on to work as a postdoctoral research fellow at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology (2015-2018) under the advisement of Dr. Duane Waliser. During this time, he leveraged his extensive background in meteorology, climate dynamics, and statistical methods for atmospheric sciences to study global predictability of atmospheric rivers and their relationship to large-scale modes of climate variability. Additionally, Mike maintained and initiated collaborations with UCSD-Scripps and the University of California, Los Angeles, respectively, contributing to publications on meridional mode dynamics, low cloud-SST coupling on decadal time scales, and the contribution of low cloud feedbacks to the 2014-2015 Baja marine heatwave.

At CW3E, Mike will serve as project lead for subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) forecasting of atmospheric rivers (ARs). He will investigate the S2S AR prediction skill of operational hindcast systems, monitor and help facilitate the production of week-3 AR activity outlooks, develop new experimental S2S AR outlook products, and work with CW3E researchers on the implementation of machine learning algorithms and post-processing techniques to improve AR prediction skill.