within the  Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones Conference:

Boston, MA, January 12-16, 2019

Motivation

The Centennial anniversary of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) approaches and many scientists and students prepare to share with the nation and even the world, the accomplishments of their research. In this group of research, we can find a very big team of women scientists working extensively in topics that try to unravel the complex interactions within the atmosphere in the tropical regions.  This year AMS president is Jenni Evans, Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science. She received her doctorate in applied mathematics from Monash University. Her research focuses on tropical cyclones from genesis to decay, statistical meteorology, climate, and convection studies including interactions with African Easterly Waves. Jenni Evans is an expert in the big data research. In having such inspirational role model to lead the AMS, there is no better time and opportunity to unite all of the great women that in some way or another have contributed and continue to contribute to tropical meteorology. If it is either through extensive collaborative research with innovative and publishable results, outreach initiatives, or an all-female crew flying into a Hurricane, tropical meteorology has been heard and explored by extraordinary women. Motivated by the work of many females in the field that serve as inspiring figures for many women generations, a “Women in the Tropics” session is proposed here.

The Women in the Tropics will be organized by Kelly Nunez Ocasio, Graduate Student from Pennsylvania State University Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science in collaboration with Shirley T. Murillo, Deputy Director of Hurricane Research Division, Courtney Schumacher, Professor at TAMU and, Ada Monzon, Broadcast Meteorologist in Puerto Rico.

The conference session will be organized as follow:

Introductory Remarks (10 minutes): Kelly Nunez, Pennsylvania State University

Key Note speaker (20-30 minutes): “History of women in the field of Tropical Meteorology”

Three consecutives talks on tropical meteorology research lead by women (each 12-15 minutes)

Coffee Break (15 minutes)

Panel Session (30 minutes): “The role of a women in the Tropics, what are the pillars to follow?”

Currently a list of women scientists is being develop to invite to the Women in the Tropics session. In case we receive many positive responses from speakers, who we would encourage to submit abstracts for the proposed conference session, then we are prepared to have more than one session. In addition, some of the participating scientists, in a combination of junior and senior scholars, can become session chairs.

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The proposed session would solicit abstracts on the aforementioned topics, with a specific interest in recent tropical cyclones (e.g., Hurricanes Harvey 2017, Florence 2018, Maria 2017, Lane 2018, Typhoon Mangkhut 2018, Tropical Cyclone Idai 2019). Ideally, the session would solicit abstracts on a variety of topics, including but not limited to: observational and modeling research, emergency management and decision-making studies, and forecasting successes and failures. We hope to take advantage of the diverse attendees to have a conversation about the complicated and interdisciplinary nature of tropical cyclone rainfall understanding, prediction, and mitigation.