Have you ever wondered why it is that it rains almost every day in the Hawaiian islands? Or why it is dry on the Leeward side but wet on the Windward side? Or how it can rain like crazy one minute, then dry up and be sunny the next? For the scientific explanation, read up on Dr. Chen's work. He studies the effect of local terrain, i.e., mountains, valleys, forest, on rainfall in tropical islands. He has a model for the island of Hawaii that runs 24/7, predicting rainfall from day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and then comparing it to local data year round. You can link to the site that shows the calculations, performed on his local cluster, compared to data, by going to www.hawaii.edu/hpc and then following "Other Links."
Why did Dr. Chen start this work? When he came to UH in 1984, after a 3-year postdoctoral appointment at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, he saw that he could apply the NCAR MM5 model to the Hawaiian Islands. The local weather fluctuations were poorly understood in the islands. In the large meteorological models, all grid points over the Hawaiian Islands are over the ocean. What was needed to help the residents of Hawaii, was a high resolution meso-scale model with many grid points over land. Combining data from observation with numerical modeling, Dr. Chen's team started with the Big Island, and now has the model running to perform experimental high resolution model forecasts for all major Hawaiian islands throughout the year. One of his students, Yang Yang, received a UH/MHPCC Engagement Grant award in 2004 to work on that model for the Big Island and recently completed his PhD based on that work. Another student under Dr. Chen's guidance, and sponsored by the National Weather Service, is working on the model for the island of Maui. And, finally, Hiep van Nguyen, a 2005 and 2006 Engagement Grant awardee is working on the model for the island of Oahu.
Dr. Chen is also collaborating with Taiwan to study the processes leading to the localized heavy rainfall during the early summer rainy season in Taiwan, and is planning a data collection project in 2008. The last time he traveled to Taiwan for an international heavy rainfall experiment was in 1987.
Dr. Chen teaches an undergraduate course in Atmospheric Dynamics. He currently advises 3 graduate students and 1 PhD student. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1980. To learn more about Dr. Chen, his education, his current work and his publications, please go to his website at http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/MET/Faculty/chen/chen_index.html.
