Lou Wicker and son

I am currently serving on the steering committee for the NSF/NOAA-sponsored VORTEX2 field program. I am also privileged to be leading a talented and dedicated group of NSSL staffers in providing a significant portion of the operational equipment and support infrastructure for the V2 field program.

Email:
Louis.Wicker@noaa.gov
Phone:
405-325-6340
Address:
NSSL/WRDD Rm 4366, 120 David L. Boren Boulevard, Norman, OK 73072

Research Interests

I am currently involved in research in a number of areas:

  1. Nonhydrostatic atmospheric model development (particularily numerical methods used to solve the compressible Euler equations)
  2. Dynamics of severe storms and tornadogenesis
  3. Radar and other in situ observations of supercell thunderstorms
  4. The development of ensemble Kalman filter data assimilation techniques for convection
  5. Numerical weather prediction at meso- and convective scales (a.k.a. Warn on Forecast)

Professional History

I have a broad set of research interests which generally are focused on numerical analysis, simulation, and forecasts of severe convection and tornadoes. My original research interests in supercells and tornadoes can be traced back to nearly my high school days in the late 1970s. While obtaining my undergraduate and Master's degrees at University of Oklahoma in the 1980s, I became an avid storm chaser and eventually was fortunate enough to be able to work on some of the first in situ deployments of instruments near severe storms with my mentors: Howie Bluestein (OU) and later Don Burgess and Bob Davies-Jones (NSSL). I got the modeling bug while doing my work with Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen on satellite temperature assimilation for my Master's degree, and was fortunate enough to be able to work on a Ph.D. with Dr. Bob Wilhelmson at the University of Illinois on numerical simulations of tornadogenesis. This work was facilitated by the newly formed NSF computing center, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where I became very involved with the newly developing paradigm of "computational science" that is now ubiquitous across most scientific disciplines. During most of the 1990s I was a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University. In 1999 I was very fortunate to be able to return to my meteorological roots here in Norman as a scientist at the National Severe Storms Lab. My work today continues to focus on severe storms and tornadoes. I very much believe (and history I think demonstrates this clearly) that increasing our scientific understanding of these phenomena directly leads to better forecasts and warnings for the public.

Current Research Interests and Associated Publications

Dynamics of severe storms and tornadoes

Wandishin, M., D. Stensrud, S. Mullen, and L. J. Wicker, 2008: On the predictability of mesoscale convective systems: Two-dimensional simulations. Weather and Forecasting, 23, 773–785. DOI: 10.1175/2008WAF2007057.1.

Fierro, A. O, M. S. Gilmore, L. J. Wicker, E. R. Mansell, and J. M. Straka, 2006: Electrification and lightning in an idealized boundary-crossing supercell simulation of 2 June 1995. Mon. Wea. Rev., 134, 3149-3171.

Gilmore, M. S., and L. J. Wicker, 2002: Influences of the local environment on supercell cloud-to-ground lightning, radar characteristics, and severe weather on 2 June 1995. Mon. Wea. Rev., 130, 2349-2372.

Wicker, L. J., and R. B. Wilhelmson, 1995: Simulation and analysis of tornado development and decay within a three-dimensional supercell thunderstorm. J. of Atmos. Sci., 52, 2675-2703.

Observation and analyses of supercells and tornadoes

Shared Mobile Atmospheric Research and Teaching Radar (SMART-R) Program

French, M., H. B. Bluestein, D. C. Dowell, L. J. Wicker, M. R. Kramer, and A. L. Pazmany, 2008: An example of the use of mobile, Doppler radar data in tornado verification. Mon. Wea. Rev., in press.

French, M., H. B. Bluestein, D. C. Dowell, L. J. Wicker, M. R. Kramer, and A. L. Pazmany, 2008: High-resolution, mobile, Doppler observations of cyclic mesocyclogenesis in a supercell. Mon. Wea. Rev., 136, 4997–5016. DOI: 10.1175/2008MWR2407.1.

Dowell, D. C., C. R. Alexander, J. M. Wurman, and L. J. Wicker, 2005: Reflectivity patterns and wind-measurement errors in high-resolution radar observations of tornadoes. Mon. Wea. Rev., 133, 1501–1524.

Development of data assimilation methods for severe convection

Dowell, D. C., and L. J. Wicker, 2008: Additive noise for storm-scale ensemble forecasting and data assimilation. J. Atmos. Ocea. Tech., accepted for publication, September 29. 2008.

Stensrud, D., M. Xue, L. J. Wicker, K. E. Kelleher, M. P. Foster, J. T. Schaefer, R. S. Schneider4, S. G. Benjamin, S. S. Weygandt, J. T. Ferree, and J. P. Tuell, 2008: Convective-scale Warn on Forecast: A Vision for 2020. Submitted to the Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., Dec 8, 2008

Dowell, D. C., F. Zhang, L. J. Wicker, C. Snyder, and N. A. Crook, 2004: Wind and thermodynamic retrievals in the 17 May 1981 Arcadia, Oklahoma supercell: Ensemble Kalman filter experiments. Mon. Wea. Rev., 132, 1982-2005.

Numerical methods for nonhydrostatic models

Wicker, L. J., and W. C. Skamarock, 2002: Time-splitting methods for elastic models using forward time schemes. Mon. Wea. Rev., 130, 2088–2097.

Wicker, L. J., and W. C. Skamarock, 1998: A time splitting scheme for the elastic equations incorporating second-order Runge-Kutta time differencing. Mon. Wea. Rev., 126, 1992–1999.

To search my complete list of recent publications, please see NSSL's Publications Search.

Current Vita

Louis J. Wicker (.pdf, 163 kB, last updated 10 Mar 2009)

Other Interests

Python in computational science

Lou's Python Page

Reproducible research in computational science

Reproducible Research Blog offsite ink warning

Randy LeVeque: Wave propagation software, computational science, and reproducible research offsite ink warning (.pdf, 412 kB)

Randy LeVeque: Python tools for reproducible research on hyperbolic problems offsite ink warning