Climate Impacts on Midwest Agriculture; Monitoring and Data

Dr. Rezaul Mahmood is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Geology of Western Kentucky University.  He is Associate Director of the Kentucky Climate Center and the Kentucky Mesonet Project.  Rezaul received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Geography from University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.  He has also received an M.A. and Ph.D. in Geography from the State University of New York at Albany (SUNYA) and the University of Oklahoma, respectively. He specializes in hydroclimatology and hydrometeorology (soil moisture and precipitation), land surface atmospheric interactions, meso-scale modeling, and agricultural climatology/meteorology. Currently, Dr. Mahmood is working on the soil moisture climatology of the Great Plains and its relationship with long-term climate conditions; impacts of land use and soil moisture anomaly on planetary atmospheric boundary layer, precipitation, evapotranspiration, and temperature.  In the past he has conducted research on monsoonal precipitation and soil moisture availability and modeling their impacts on rainfed rice productivity.

He has also examined climate change and temperature variability and modeled their impacts on crop productivity, irrigation water requirements, and cropping pattern.

Jim Angel has been the Illinois State Climatologist since 1997 and holds a Ph.D. (1996) from the University of Illinois in the Department of Geography. His Ph.D. research was on Great Lakes storms. Since 1984, he has worked at the Illinois State Water Survey as a researcher on projects that examined droughts, floods, rainfall patterns, extreme rainfall events, storms, El Niño, La Niña, and climate change.

He was the co-author, along with Floyd Huff, on a rainfall frequency study (for example, the 100-year storm) that became the new standard for designing water-handling structures in Illinois. He has published several Water Survey publications, and journal articles in scientific publications such as Monthly Weather Review, Journal of Climate, and Journal of Applied Meteorology. He was recently the co-author on the new Climate Atlas of Illinois, summarizing 50 years of research at the Illinois State Water Survey.

Dr. Dev Niyogi is the Assistant Professor for EAS & Agronomy & Indiana State Climatologist. He received his B.S. Civil Engineering, Univ. of Poona, India, Report on: Development, Validation, and Implementation of an Air Quality Model for an Industrial Area, Fall 1994. He received his M.S. Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University, Thesis on Dynamic Interactions in Soil Vegetation Atmosphere Transfer Processes, Fall 1996. He received his Ph.D. Atmospheric Sciences, North Carolina State University, Dissertation on Biosphere Atmosphere Interactions coupled with CO2 and Soil Moisture Changes, 2000. His research interests are: Representing Land Surface Processes in mesoscale weather forecast models and Regional Climate Models for severe weather/ convection initiation,Satellite Remote sensing and data assimilation within weather and climate models

Dr. Dennis Todey has been the state and extension climatologist for South Dakota since 2003.  He is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering at South Dakota State University with appointments in the Cooperative Extension Service and Agricultural Experiment Station.  Since coming to South Dakota he has added weather stations across the state to help supply more information to people directly and the through the South Dakota climate web site.  He has conducted research on long term climate trends and climate-yield relationships throughout the Midwest.  He has also taught many classes understanding small scale climate variations relating to wind, temperature and moisture in the atmosphere and is a frequent speaker on long range outlooks, climate trends and general climate information. He received his BS at Iowa State University in Meteorology, his MS at South Dakota School Mines & Technology in Meteorology and his PhD at Iowa State University in Agricultural Meteorology.