UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — David Stensrud, head, Penn State's Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science, was awarded the Charles Franklin Brooks Award for Outstanding Service to the Society from the American Meteorological Society at the 99th AMS Annual Meeting held Jan. 6-10 in Phoenix. Stensrud received the award for “exceptional contributions to the society through service as editor and co-chief editor of Weather and Forecasting, chair of the Mesoscale Processes committee and STAC commissioner.”
"It is an honor to be associated with Charles Franklin Brooks, the founder of AMS, who was remembered by his colleagues as a great humanitarian in addition to being an incredibly talented scientist,” said Stensrud.
Stensrud has been active in AMS for more than 30 years. He has been a member since he was a student, served as co-chief and editor of the journal Weather and Forecasting, and has been extremely involved with AMS conferences and symposia where he has presented, served on and chaired numerous committees.
Most recently, he served as commissioner of AMS’ Scientific and Technological Activities Commission. He was appointed incoming commissioner in 2014, transitioned to commissioner in 2015 and to past commissioner in 2017. STAC, charged with advancing science and technology and strengthening the science communities within the society, is a very large commission with six boards, 30 committees and more than 450 volunteer members.
“The reputation of AMS depends on the quality of its publications, the vitality of its conferences and meetings and the strategic direction of its scientific components. David has made significant contributions in all three of these areas,” said James Kimpel, scientist emeritus and former director of the National Storms Laboratory, professor emeritus of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma and past president of AMS. “His unselfish contributions to AMS for more than 30 years makes him eminently qualified to receive the Charles Franklin Brooks Award.”
Stensrud is well known for his studies applying numerical weather prediction models and data assimilation methods to better understand severe weather, convective-scale predictability, and the North American monsoon. He has written more than 100 peer-reviewed publications and a textbook, “Parameterization Schemes: Keys to Understanding Numerical Weather Models.”
Stensrud was an inaugural awardee of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 1996. He also was awarded the AMS Clarence Leroy Meisinger Award in 1998 and was elected as an AMS Fellow in 2009.
Prior to joining the Penn State faculty in 2014, Stensrud was a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, where he served as leader of the Models and Assimilation Team and chief of the Forecast Research and Development Division.
Stensrud earned a B.A. in meteorology and mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his M.S. and Ph.D., both in meteorology, from Penn State.
AMS is the nation’s premier scientific and professional organization promoting and disseminating information about the atmospheric, oceanic and hydrologic sciences.