Karen Kosiba

Dr. Karen Kosiba has been an atmospheric scientist and a Doppler on Wheels (DOW) project scientist at the Center for Severe Weather Research since 2008. Dr. Kosiba’s research mainly focuses on the kinematics and dynamics of severe convective storms, characterizing the low-level wind structure in tornadoes, and understanding the boundary layer winds and small-scale structures in landfalling hurricanes. Key to her research is executing field projects to collect data that can be analyzed to better understand and predict these hazardous weather events. Additionally, she is passionate about science education, regularly participating in outreach activities at schools, museums, and festivals, and online and through media interviews and consultations. A strong believer in experiencing weather from the inside of a mobile weather radar, she has participated as a radar operator, project scientist, and project leader in a multitude of field projects, including: Radar Observations of Tornadoes and Thunderstorms Experiment (ROTATE), Hurricanes and Landfall (HAL), Convectively and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS), and the Verification of the Origins of Rotation in Thunderstorms Experiment (VORTEX2), Long Lake-Axis-Parallel Lake-Effect Storms Project (LLAP), AgI Seeding Cloud Impact Investigation (ASCII), Ontario Winter Lake-effect Systems (OWLeS), Plains Elevated Convection At Night (PECAN), Tornadic Winds: In situ and Radar at Low-levels (TWIRL), SNOWIE (Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime Clouds: The Idaho Experiment), and Remote sensing of Electrification, Lightning, And Mesoscale/microscale Processes with Adaptive Ground Observations (RELAMPAGO).