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My main research interests are in climate change and applied climate science, focusing on utilizing synoptic methods in a variety of applications. I am currently PI on a grant from NOAA's Climate Program Office that explores the development of excess heat and excess cold factors as an official monitoring product for NOAA. We recently finished projects from three other federal grants from NASA and two from NOAA; the NASA-funded research applied synoptic methods in the development of a water clarity index as an indicator of climate change in the Great Lakes; one NOAA grant explored various indicators of climate change related to human thermal comfort, while another NOAA grant examined the role of atmospheric circulation in day-to-day sea-level variability. Other previous grant-based research includes assessing the impacts of climate change on hazardous heat events in California, and studying the relationship between synoptic weather types and asthma in New York State, and exploring water clarity along the coast of the Southeastern U.S. Other non-grant related research has included studying the relationship of air pollution to synoptic weather types and atmospheric circulation patterns in Cleveland; the association of circulation patterns to chlorophyll levels near the Florida Gulf Coast, and the impact of transitional weather types on winter mortality. My master's thesis focused on joining synoptic methods with global climate model output data in order to project future tornado day frequency and seasonality in the U.S. My dissertation research focused primarily on the development of a gridded synoptic weather typing classification for the United States, which will be useful in a number of applications. I also serve as the Managing Editor of the International Journal of Biometeorology.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

• Obarein, O.A., Lee, C.C. (2022): Differential Signal of Change Among Multiple Components of West African Rainfall. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 149, 379-399. DOI: 10.1007/s00704-022-04052-1.

  Ilias, P., Kassomenos, P., Lee, C.C. (2022): Trends in airmass frequencies across Europe. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 148, 105-122. DOI: 10.1007/s00704-022-03921-z.

  Lee, C.C. (2021): Weather Whiplash: Trends in rapid temperature changes in a warming climate. International Journal of Climatology 42(8), 4214-4222. DOI: DOI:10.1002/joc.7458.

  Pirhalla, D.E., Lee, C.C., Sheridan, S.C. Ransibrahmanakul, V. (2021): Atlantic coastal sea level variability and synoptic-scale meteorological forcing. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 61(3), 205-222. DOI: 10.1175/JAMC-D-21-0046.1.

  Smith E.T., Obarein, O., Sheridan, S.C., Lee, C.C. (2021): Assessing trends in atmospheric circulation patterns across North America. International Journal of Climatology 41(4), 2679-2692. DOI: 10.1002/joc.6983.

  Lee, C.C., Obarein, O., Sheridan, S.C., Smith, E.T., Adams, R.E. (2021): Examining trends in multiple parameters of seasonally-relative extreme temperature and dew point events across North America. International Journal of Climatology 41(S1), E2360-E2378. DOI:10.1002/joc.6852.

  Adams, R.E., Lee, C.C., Smith, E.T., Sheridan, S.C. (2021): The relationship between atmospheric circulation patterns and extreme temperature events in North America. International Journal of Climatology 41(1), 92-103. DOI: 10.1002/joc.6610.

  Lee, C.C., Barnes, B.B., Sheridan, S.C., Smith, E.T., Hu, C., Pirhalla, D.E., Ransibrahmanakul, V., Adams, R.E. (2020): Using Machine Learning to Model Water Clarity in the Great Lakes. Journal of Great Lakes Research 46(6), 1501-1510. DOI: 10.1016/j.jglr.2020.07.022.

  Sheridan S.C., Lee, C.C., Smith E.T. (2020): A comparison between station observations and reanalysis data in the identification of extreme temperature events. Geophysical Research Letters 47(15), e2020GL088120. DOI: 10.1029/2020GL088120.

  Lee, C.C. (2020): Trends and variability in air mass frequencies: indicators of a changing climate. Journal of Climate 33(19), 8603-8617. DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0094.1.

  Smith, E.T., Lee, C.C., Barnes, B.B., Adams, R.E., Pirhalla, D.E., Ransibrahmanakul, V., Hu, C., Sheridan, S.C. (2020): A synoptic climatological analysis of the atmospheric drivers of water clarity variability in the Great Lakes. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 59(5), 915-935. DOI: 10.1175/JAMC-D-19-0156.1.

  Sheridan, S.C. Lee, C.C., Adams, R., Smith, E.T., Pirhalla, D.E., Ransibrahmanakul, V. (2019): Temporal modeling of anomalous coastal sea-level values using synoptic climatological patterns. Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans 124(9), 6531-6544. DOI: 10.1029/2019JC015421.

  Lee, C.C. (2019): The Gridded Weather Typing Classification version 2: a Global Scale Expansion. International Journal of Climatology (40), 1178-1196. DOI: 10.1002/JOC.6263.

  Sheridan, S.C., Lee, C.C., Allen, M.J. (2019): The mortality response to absolute and relative temperature extremes. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16, 1493.  DOI: 10.3390/ijerph16091493.

  Lee, C.C., Sheridan, S.C. (2018): Trends in weather type frequencies across North America. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science 1(41). DOI: 10.1038/s41612-018-0051-7.

  Sheridan, S.C., Lee, C.C. (2018): Temporal trends in absolute and relative extreme temperature events across North America. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 123(21), 11889-11898. DOI: 10.1029/2018JD029150.

  Ballinger, T.J., Lee, C.C., Sheridan, S.C., Crawford, A.D., Overland, J.E., Wang, M. (2018): Subseasonal atmospheric regimes and ocean background forcing of Pacific Arctic sea ice melt onset. Climate Dynamics 52(9-10), 5657-5672. DOI: 10.1007/s00382-018-4467-x.

  Lee, C.C., Sheridan, S.C. (2018): A new approach to modeling temperature-related mortality: Non-linear autoregressive models with exogenous input. Environmental Research 164, 53-64. DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2018.02.020.

  Islam, R.M., Sheridan, S.C., Lee, C.C. (2018): Using self-organizing maps to identify the South Asian seasonal cycle. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 137(1-2), 1385-1401. DOI: 10.1007/s00704-018-2681-4.

RECENT & UPCOMING PRESENTATIONS:

• Weather Whiplash: The long-term trends in rapidly changing temperature events

           104^th Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union

           Chicago, Illinois; December 2022 (POSTER)

   

  Climate change is more than average: contrasting trends in means versus trends in extremes in a warming climate

  118th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers

           New York City, New York; February 2022 (REMOTE – COVID)

   

   

  Greater than averages: how metrics of extreme weather are trending differently than averages would suggest (POSTER)

  103rd Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union

  New Orleans, Louisiana; December 2021

   

  The development and application of a new global-scale air mass classification

           117th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers

           Seattle, Washington; April 2021 (REMOTE – COVID)

   

  Global Trends in Air Mass Frequencies: Multivariate Indicators of Climate Change

  102nd Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union

  San Francisco, California; December 2020 (REMOTE – COVID)

   

  Development and applications of a new global-scale weather type classification

  116th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers

  Denver, Colorado; April 2020 (CANCELLED (COVID))

   

  Leveraging Machine Learning and Synoptic Climatology to Model and Forecast Water Clarity in the Great Lakes

  101st Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union

  San Francisco, California; December 2019 (POSTER)

   

  A global-scale gridded classification of multivariate surface weather types: the GWTC-2

  European Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

  Copenhagen, Denmark; September 2019

   

  Multi-decadal changes to the frequency of North American Weather Types

  115th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers

  Washington, D.C.; April 2019

   

  The Changing Frequency of Spatiotemporally Relative Weather Types across North America

  6th Annual Kent State Environmental Science & Design Research Symposium

  Kent, Ohio; March 2019 (POSTER)

   

  Changing Frequencies of Spatiotemporally Relative Surface Weather Types in North America

  100th Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union

  Washington, D.C.; December 2018 (POSTER)

   

  Long-term trends in the frequency of North American weather types

  41st Applied Geography Conference

  Kent, OH; October 2018

   

  Modeling Temperature-Related Mortality using Nonlinear Autoregressive Models with Exogenous Input

  Joint Annual Meeting of the International Society of Exposure Science and the International  Society for Environmental Epidemiology

  Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; August 2018

   

   

   

  Using nonlinear autoregressive models with exogenous input to analyze temperature-related human mortality

  9th Conference on Environment and Health, as part of the 98th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting

  Austin, TX; January 2018

COURSES TEACHING

• Physical Geography
• Global Climate Change
• Applied Climatology