NOAA Researcher First Meteorologist Chosen To Receive Soloviev Medal From European Geophysical Society

Charles Doswell III has been chosen to receive the Sergey Soloviev Medal presented by the European Geophysical Society. Doswell is a senior research scientist with the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies, a joint institute of the University of Oklahoma and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration located in Norman, Okla. He is the first meteorologist to be selected for the prestigious award. NOAA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The award recognizes work accomplished by Doswell for the most part when he was research meteorologist with the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory, also in Norman, before his retirement from federal service in Jan. 2001.

“The Soloviev Medal represents the latest piece of international recognition for important severe storm research being conducted in Norman for the past 40 years,” said Peter J. Lamb, CIMMS director and George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma. “Chuck is certainly deserving of this award.”

The Soloviev Medal is a prestigious award established by the EGS Session on Natural Hazards in recognition of the scientific achievement of Sergey Soloviev. It is reserved for scientists who make exceptional contributions to natural hazards, in particular for those whose research aims at improving knowledge of basic principles as well as for the assessment and proper mitigation of hazards in view of environmental protection and the integrity of human life and socioeconomic systems.

The Soloviev Medal was first awarded in 1996 and is not necessarily awarded in every year. Previous recipients have been from the fields of Volcanology and Seismology (R. S. Punongbayan, Phillipines), Hydrogeology (F. Siccardi, Italy), Geology and Geophysics (E. E. Brabb, U.S. Geological Survey), Volcanology (F. Barberi, Italy), and Seismology-Hydrology-Geology (L. A. Mendes-Victor, Portugal).

The medal will be presented at the EGS Awards Dinner in April 2005 during the EGS Assembly in Vienna, Austria. In addition, Doswell is expected to give the Soloviev Medal Lecture during the EGS Assembly, after which it will be published in one of the EGS journals.

Doswell’s career history has always been tied to the notion of an interaction between basic research and weather forecasting. His scientific research typically includes a component, directly or indirectly, associated with application to forecasting. His research interests focus mainly on tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, but he has developed an interest in just about everything related to weather. He has published papers on objective analysis of meteorological data; exploring new data streams like wind profilers, satellite images, and lightning ground strike data; weather forecasting; methods for verification of weather forecasts, forecaster training, societal impacts of hazardous weather, and the role of humans in weather forecasting. Doswell has authored or co-authored more than 100 formal, refereed

scientific publications and over 120 informal publications and reports.

He has collaborated with scientists throughout the world, including Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Australia. Doswell has been invited to lecture on various topics in severe storms meteorology by the World Meteorological Organization and EUMETSAT, the European Meteorological Satellite agency. He has served on the WMO Steering Group on Very Short-Range Forecasting and on the Program Committees for several international scientific conferences and symposiums. In 1989, he was invited to participate in the first severe storms forecasting experiments in Sydney, Australia. He is presently conducting research in

collaboration with scientists at the University of the Balearic Islands in Spain, mostly concerned with flash flood-producing weather and other severe weather in the western Mediterranean.

Originally from Villa Park, Ill., Doswell earned a Bachelor of Science degree in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in meteorology from the University of Oklahoma.

His career began with student trainee positions with the Weather Bureau (now National Weather Service) in Madison and the National Severe Storms Forecast Center in Kansas City, Mo. He served more than two years in the Army, with tours in Viet Nam and at the Atmospheric Sciences Laboratory at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

After earning his doctorate, Doswell worked as a research forecaster at the National Severe Storms Forecast Center’s Severe Local Storms Unit (now the Storm Prediction Center) for six years, and then as a research meteorologist with the Environmental Research Laboratories in Boulder, Colo., for four years. He moved to Norman and joined NSSL in the fall of 1986, where he worked until his retirement from federal service in January 2001. Doswell then joined the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies at the University of Oklahoma as a Senior Research Scientist. He is an American Meteorological Society-Certified Consulting Meteorologist and an Adjunct Professor with the OU School of Meteorology.

His professional memberships include the American Meteorological Society, National Weather Association, Sigma Xi Research Society, and he is a Fellow in the Royal Meteorological Society. He served as an elected AMS Councilor from 1997 to 2000. He has also served as an Associate Editor for several AMS journals and recently edited an AMS Monograph on “Severe Convective Storms.” He was an Associate Editor for the American Geophysical Union publication, “ The Tornado: Its Structure, Prediction, Dynamics, and Hazards,” which was named the Best New Book in Geography and Earth Sciences by American Publishers, Inc.

Doswell has received numerous honors throughout his career. In 2002, the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute presented him with the Antonin Strnad Gold Commemorative Medal, the first American to receive such a distinction. He was a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer for the period 1998-2000, lecturing on severe storms around the nation. In 1999, he co-authored a paper that was named an NSSL Outstanding Paper, and in 1998, another co-authored paper was named an Environmental Research Laboratories Outstanding Paper. In 1995, he received the Research Achievement in Support of Operations Award (now the Fujita Award) from the National Weather Association. The AMS presented him with its Editor’s Award in 1994. He received NOAA Sustained Superior Performance

Awards in 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996 and 1997, and he was a co-recipient of a Department of Commerce Silver Medal in 1989, as well as the NSSL Gold Medal Unit Citation in 1995.

In addition to his professional work in meteorology, Doswell has been a hobbyist storm chaser since 1972 and, based on his storm chasing efforts, has made numerous contributions, including technical guidance, photographs, and storm video, to NWS storm spotter training since 1976. After the 1999 tornado outbreak in Oklahoma and Kansas, he served on FEMA’s Building Performance Assessment Team, which made extensive surveys of the damage. He presently is part of the NWS Quick Response Team, participating as requested in storm damage surveys after major tornado events.

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