Don Wilhite, professor of applied climate science in the School of Natural Resources, will present "The Applied Climate Science in SNR: Past, Current and Future" at 3:30 p.m., Sept. 25 in Hardin Hall auditorium.
The Applied Climate Science program at UNL began in the early 1960s with the hiring of Norman Rosenberg. The original focus of this program was on agricultural meteorology/micrometeorology, with a heavy emphasis on field research in Nebraska and elsewhere, in addition to a focus on graduate education.
Since that time, the program has diversified with a greater emphasis on climate variability and climate change, natural hazard mitigation, climate services, climate monitoring and climate science education. This change has been the result of changing national research, funding priorities and local, state and regional needs.
The program maintains a significant international focus and, with the recent approval of the new major in Applied Climate Science, the emphasis on undergraduate education will usher in a new era for this highly successful program.
Wilhite has been a UNL faculty member since 1977. He joined the Center for Agricultural Meteorology and Climatology when it was formed in 1979. Wilhite founded the International Drought Information Center at UNL in 1989 and was the founding director of the National Drought Mitigation Center in 1995, a position he held until 2007 when he was appointed director of the School of Natural Resources.
He rejoined the faculty in 2012 to continue his research and outreach efforts on national and international projects related to drought monitoring, mitigation, planning and policy.
More details at: http://events.unl.edu/2013/09/25/80538/