Hi! I am Dr. Greg Blumberg, an Assistant Professor of meteorology at Millersville University’s Earth Sciences Department. I am a former NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and I got all my meteorology degrees at the University of Oklahoma’s School of Meteorology. I like to focus my research and teaching on applied problems rooted in the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL). As the PBL directly influences the livelihood of people and is significantly under observed with our current instrumentation networks, my expertise is useful to a variety of research communities. Because of the diversity of PBL applications and research, you’ll often find me promoting a holistic perspective of meteorology in my research and teaching. In some ways, I am a Swiss-Army Knife scientist, with many different tools to approach a problem.

Research Summary

My research uses a variety of observational, modeling, and theoretical techniques when working on a problem. Each technique has its own defincencies, and by using many different approaches we can discover new knowledge. Observations I sometimes use include uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAS), radiosondes, and ground-based remote sensors (Doppler Lidar, AERI) to understand the vertical structure of the PBL. Use of these instruments usually requires knowledge of data processing techniques, and in the case of remote sensors, how the retrieval works. As these instruments can under sample the spatiotemporal variability in the PBL, additional information is needed to fill in the gaps. In my work, this is sometimes accomplished through objective analysis techniques, and in many cases numerical weather prediction models (e.g., Weather Research and Forecasting; WRF). At the foundation of my work is a strong math background, computer science skills, and regular experience observing and predicting the weather.

Research topics I tend to pursue tend to have some form of direct application to a specific community. I like to think that knowledge of this end user can help close the gap between research and operations. Communities I often think about when researching tend to be operational in nature - most commonly forecasting and range safety professionals. Other communities tend to have some form of under representation or are severely impacted by the weather (severe weather or pollution). Some research topics I’ve worked on:

• severe weather prediction and analysis
• diurnal boundary layer transitions
• launch range safety
• thermodynamic retrievals for PBL research
• weather communication in neurodiverse and disabled populations
• air quality and mountain meteorology