The University at Albany's group of atmospheric scientists was
established
in the early 1960's by Dr.
Vincent Schafer, the protege of Nobel Laureate chemist Dr. Irving
Langmuir.
Schaefer, a world renowned cloud physicist, discovered the method of
cloud
seeding that ushered in the science of weather modification. The Atmospheric
Sciences Research Center has continued from that time to the
present
as a research organisation, in addition to the faculty who have formed
the Atmospheric Science academic program on the main University campus.
Originally founded as a Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences
in the mid-1960's when the uptown campus of the University at Albany
was
new, the Geological Sciences faculty separated in the late 1960's
to form their own Department, and both they and the Department of
Atmospheric
Sciences grew rapidly into nationally distinguished programs. In 1996,
the remnants of the Department of Geological Sciences merged back with
Atmospheric Sciences to form a combined Department of Earth and
Atmospheric
Sciences.
The current group of atmospheric scientists covers a broad range of interests in the atmospheric and environmental sciences. Topics of research and study include synoptic-dynamic meteorology, mesometeorology, severe weather, climate, hydrometeorology, theoretical meteorology (spanning planetary through convective scales), solar and wind energy development, solar radiation meteorology, hurricanes and tropical meteorology, energy conservation, atmospheric electricity and lightning, cloud and precipitation physics, atmospheric chemistry, acid precipitation, air pollution, and bioclimatology. Research and teaching facilities here are among the most advanced in the nation.
Atmospheric
Science hall displays in the Earth Science Building
aircraft
wingtip
with lightning strike damage