University of Utah

THE UNIVERSITY OF Utah, founded in 1850, is a public, coeducational institution located in Salt Lake City. The university confers bachelor's, master's, doctoral, and professional degrees in a variety of academic and professional disciplines. The university offers a focus on environmental science, and the university's College of Mines and Earth Sciences is home to the Departments of Meteorology and Geology and Geophysics.

The Department of Meteorology focuses on offering a background for meteorology and related environmental science careers with an understanding of system processes involving weather and climate. The program's emphasis on mountain weather and climate (as well as the complexities involved in forecasting weather on complex terrain) stems from Salt Lake's location on the western slope of the Wasatch Mountains (a range in the Rocky Mountains). Integrating math, physics, and chemistry and a broad range of academic opportunities with dynamic, physical, and synoptic meteorology prepares students for employment as meteorologists with the National Weather Service or for a broad range of careers with government and private employers in meteorology or environmental sciences.

Water levels have been steadily decreasing in Lake Powell, which borders Utah and Arizona. The university's environmental program focuses on environmental policy and how human actions affect the natural dynamics.

The department's small size ensures student access to faculty, staff, and research opportunities. The faculty has diverse expertise and research interests in a broad range of observational, modeling, and theoretical studies. Current interests include tropical convection and hurricanes; boundary layer modeling; fire weather prediction and fire modeling; mountain meteorology; weather analysis and prediction; parameterization, remote sensing, and modeling of clouds; aerosol physics and [Page 1042]air pollution; numerical modeling, data assimilation, and predictability; and climate change.

The departments teaching facilities on the main campus of the University of Utah include an audiovisual teaching laboratory also serving as a classroom, research equipment, and computing resource. A mountain meteorology laboratory is located about a mile away from the primary meteorology department.

Active research currently being done within the department by faculty members and funded by governmental and private organizations includes active research in clouds, aerosols, and climate; numerical weather prediction; mountain weather and climate; tropical convection and storms; and climate variability and change.

The Department of Geology and Geophysics offers both undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Undergraduates may declare majors in geoscience (with emphases in geology, geophysics, or environmental geoscience), geological engineering, or Earth science teaching. The four graduate programs are in geology, geophysics, geological engineering, and environmental engineering.

The Earth sciences overlap and integrate with a broadening range of disciplines. With a specific understanding of specialized processes and of fitting them into the broader system framework, students and researchers both gain a better understanding of earth science systems and the internal functional processes of geophysics, geobiology, and geochemistry. A sampling of projects and themes of special interest to those studying climate change includes environmental geology, paleoclimatology, geothermics, marine geology, and groundwater and surfacewater hydrology. Recent investigations of special note undertaken by University of Utah faculty, students, and collaborators were borehole thermal gradients as long-term records of earth surface paleotemperatures and global warming and Antarctic drill holes as recorders of Tertiary paleoclimate change.

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