Katinka Bellomo, a University of Miami (UM) Meteorology and Physical Oceanography graduate student, was awarded first prize in a student poster competition by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) for the 24th Conference on Climate Change and Variability at the organization’s 92nd Annual Meeting in New Orleans. Bellomo, a graduate of the Università degli Studi di Torino - Dipartimento di Fisica Generale, is currently a 2nd year Ph.D. candidate at UM and a member of AMS. Her research is funded by a Department of Energy Office of Science grant from the Biological and Environmental Research, Regional and Global Climate Modeling (RGCM) program.

“The judges were in agreement that Katinka presented a clear, concise, and insightful study that deserved recognition,” says Michelle L’Heureux, program chair for the climate sessions at the AMS meeting.

The poster, titled, Inter-Comparison of 20th Century Trends in Cloud Cover Data Sets and Estimate of CRF Change, shows a potential to quantitatively evaluate the role of clouds in driving past and future climate change using observational data sets. This issue has been challenging researchers for decades because climate models do a poor job of simulating the response of clouds to climate change. Bellomo’s research shows observations may help improve those simulations.

“This is a great accomplishment, given the caliber of students and quantity of posters presented at the AMS annual conference,” said Dr. Amy Clement, UM Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science professor and faculty advisor to Bellomo. “It speaks to the quality of Katinka’s research and that of all of the students in our Climate Modeling Group.”

The 2012 AMS annual meeting was held January 6-13 and attended by more than 4,000 people, including a group of presenters and speakers from the UM Rosenstiel School. Among those honored at this year’s meeting, UM Professor Lynn (Nick) Shay, who was installed as a Fellow of the AMS in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences.