June 2025 News and Press from SoMAS

Jun 30, 2025

SoMAS Professor Sultan Hameed passed away in June 2025.

Photo above: A collection of photos featuring Professor Sultan Hameed, who passed away earlier this month.

It is with great regret and sorrow that we inform you that Prof. Sultan Hameed has passed.

Sultan Hameed was one of the founding members of atmospheric sciences at Stony Brook University (SBU). He began at SBU as a faculty member (Research Associate Professor) in Mechanical Engineering in 1976 with initial research areas in air quality, transport, and the boundary layer. Through collaborations with the late Prof. Robert Cess (also in Mechanical Engineering at the time) and others his research expanded to global climate change, coupled atmosphere-ocean interactions, and atmospheric “centers of action” (i.e., large-scale semi-permanent high- and low-pressure systems, and their impact on atmospheric and oceanic circulations). His appointment was converted to Associate Professor in 1981 and he was promoted to Professor in 1986. His appointment (and others such as Bob Cess) was transitioned to the Institute of Terrestrial and Planetary Atmospheres and what is now the Atmospheric Sciences Division in SoMAS. He also served as Director for ITPA from 2010 to 2014.  Sultan obtained his B. Sc. (Honors) in 1961 and his M. Sc. in 1964 from the University of Karachi and an M.S. in Physics in 1964 from the University of Toronto.  He then completed his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Manchester in 1968.  He was a Research Associate in Physics at the University of Pisa from 1964 to 1965, at Yeshiva University from 1968 to 1970, at Columbia University from 1970 to 1972 and at NASA GISS, from 1972 to 1976.

Professor Hameed has 135 publications in peer reviewed journals on atmospheric physics and chemistry and climate change.

His graduate student advisees at SBU include: Faez Bakalian, Jane Dignon, Jae Nyung Lee, I. Pittalwala, Wei Shi, Michael Flanagan, Yilin Yi, H. Lagrone, Nicholas Leonardo, Xianzhi Liu, Aichen Niu, Melissa Ou, Hongming Qi, K. Sperber, Xuefeng Wen, P. Wyant, W. Shi, and Yingyi Zhang

In recent years he taught ATM 237/Phys 237 (World Atmosphere and Climate), MAR538 (Univariate Data Analysis), MAR 570 (Multivariate Data Analysis in Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.), ATM 345 (Atmospheric Dynamics and Thermodynamics), and ATM 348 (Atmospheric Physics).

In the late 1990s and early 2000s Sultan Hameed was instrumental in designing the foundation of the current Atmospheric and Oceanic Science (ATM) degree. He also served as an advisor for the ATM program for many years. In an effort to help graduate students with the PhD qualifying exam, he led efforts to start a first-year graduate reading and discussion course in the early 2000s (now part of MAR 543). Among his recent service was as a member of the SoMAS Graduate Curriculum Committee that drafted the new Graduate Program for SoMAS, and the committee that developed the new B.S. degree in Climate Science.

Professor Hameed was a good colleague and a gentle soul who will be sorely missed.

 

Dr. Kevin Reed has received an award of $1,903,954 from the US Army Corps Engineers for a project entitled “Informing DoD Infrastructure Investments Through Storm-Typing”.

Weather, particularly in the extreme, has direct and major impacts on society and infrastructure. Efforts to minimize these weather-related disruptions are critical for the operations of many industries. Furthermore, understanding how extremes, and their impacts, will change in the future is important for informing decisions and ensuring sufficient local and regional resilience. In the contiguous US extreme events come from tropical cyclones (TCs), extratropical cyclones (ETCs), mesoscale convective systems (MCSs), and atmospheric river (AR) storms. These events pose significant risks to existing and planned Department of Defense (DoD) infrastructure and assets. These risks are further compounded by ongoing variations in extreme precipitation and the associated intensity, frequency, and seasonality of these extreme weather types. In order to effectively inform DoD infrastructure planning, we propose to implement a metrics toolkit that enables an assessment of the skill of the current Earth system model approaches to simulate the intensity, frequency and seasonality of these extreme events, as well as long-term variations. TempestExtremes, a community framework for feature detection, tracking, and analysis in large atmospheric datasets, will be used to assess the skill of individual Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) and available high-resolution regional models (HRRMs) to represent the contribution of TCs, ETCs, MCSs, and ARs to extreme precipitation and wind characteristics in the coastal zones. We will quantify changes and associated confidence with outlooks over several future time horizons relevant to building and infrastructure design. Finally, we will develop and implement a decision support tool, the Coastal Storm Hazard Mapper, that visualizes the changes in storm-specific metrics across a range of future conditions to enable DoD to make informed infrastructure decisions to enhance resilience in coastal environments.

Drs. Zhien Wang and Yufei Chu were recently awarded an NSF grant of $701,417 for their project entitled “AGS-CIF: Multi-function Airborne Raman Lidar (MARLi) and Airborne Doppler Lidar (ADL) for Water Vapor, Temperature, Wind, Aerosol/Cloud Profiling”.

We propose Multi-function Airborne Raman Lidar (MARLi) and Airborne Doppler Lidar (ADL) as a NSF Community Instrument and Facility (CIF) to fill the atmospheric science community’s needs in the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL). The MARLi and ADL, developed by the PI with NSF supports, can provide simultaneous water vapor, temperature, wind, aerosol, and cloud profiles within the PBL from the NSF/NCAR C-130 and G-V and the University of Wyoming King Air (UWKA), which are the major NSF supported Lower Atmosphere Observing Facilities (LAOF). To increase MARLi and ADL utility, we will also make them available as a part of a new PBL Moving Active Profiling System (PBLMAPS), which integrates the MARLi and zenith pointing ADL with other instruments in a cargo van. The PBLMAPS could provide uninterrupted operations while driving under safe-weather conditions to complement airborne measurements. MARLi, ADL, and PBLMAPS are all operational. The PI was the chief scientist and co-PI of the LAOF UWKA from 2006 to 2018 and had extensive experience participating in field campaigns and supporting atmospheric community researchers. Our CIF supporting efforts will start with proposal development and end with scientific analysis. Outreach efforts are planned to reach out to broad research communities.

 

Congratulations to Alyson Lowell, a 2025 PhD graduate who will join the 46th class of the prestigious John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship program as one of 88 finalists representing 34 Sea Grant programs Nationwide.

 

Ron Saporita is a retired Mechanical Engineer who has always been interested in how things work. As a private pilot, there were many instruments which fed his curiosity. The most perplexing instrument was the Garmin 430 Navigation Aide, which was GPS based with technology he had never encountered. After retirement, Ron decided to see if he could learn about other geospatial information systems (GIS) and began a journey in the Stony Brook University Geospatial Sciences Center’s Advanced Graduate Certificate Program. He has completed the programs and reflected on the journey.

“At first, being retired with a non-electronics background, to me, meant that my computer skills were not current. Was I really too old to do this? What was my motivation, other than knowledge?

Having accepted potential technical and age limitations, and satisfied with my motivation, I enrolled at SBU as a non-matriculated student. I realized that being retired and having the ability to spread out the courses were big advantages.

As I began, I had many elementary computer related questions. Professor Butchart responded promptly and was encouraging, as well as an excellent instructor. I soon began to realize that I could complete this initial course and the required core courses. With this realization, I matriculated. I must admit, basic computer skills were my biggest obstacles, and being intimidated by ArcGIS compounded my trepidation. With the help of both professors throughout the program, I began to feel more comfortable. The most challenging course was Geodatabase and Design. This tested my progress to this point but with the excellent support of Professor Jang, I was able to meet the challenge.

Looking back on the experience, I was actually able to have fun in the choice of projects. Being concerned with environmental issues I enjoyed doing research and applying GIS to several topics important to me, such as the Scallop Die-off in Peconic Bay, Ongoing Risks of Flooding of Subway Stations (left), Risk of Contamination of Water Wells from Storm basins in my Village (upper right), and a methodology to investigate further risk of storm flooding of critical infrastructure of a town on LI.. Because time for research was limited, none of the output was conclusive but, never-the-less, satisfying to me. After all, I am the customer. I am more than satisfied with the education “product” I purchased.”

 

SBU News Features

 

Latest Videos

 

Latest Publications

Gilbert, C., & Lachlan, K. (2025). Media Effects, Emotion, and Race: Extending the Climate Change Risk Perception Model in the United States. Environmental Communication, 1-21.

Yang, H., Grouzdev, D., Wang, Z., Yee, J. C., Zeng, Y., Sturmer, L., & Allam, B. (2025). Genome-wide association mapping for heat shock tolerance in Mercenaria mercenaria through SNP microarray analysis. BMC genomics, 26, 547.

Kraemer, J., & Gobler, C. J. (2025). Natural estuarine cycles of nocturnal hypoxia significantly reduce growth rates of North Atlantic bivalves. Frontiers in Marine Science, 12, 1535142.

French, M. M., & Kingfield, D. M. (2025). Comments on “Identifying Z DR Columns in Radar Data with the Hotspot Technique”. Weather and Forecasting, 40(4), 627-639.

Manconi, F., Battaglia, A., & Kollias, P. (2025). Characterization of surface clutter signal in the presence of orography for a spaceborne conically scanning W-band Doppler radar. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 18(10), 2295-2310.

Keeling, S. E., Napoli, C., Meza-Fidalgo, J., Stepanuk, J. S., Hirtle, N., Hoffman, Z., & Thorne, L. H. (2025). Drone-based observations of scarring patterns in humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in the New York Bight provide insight into foraging behavior and anthropogenic threats. PloS one, 20(5), e0324121.

Sivel, E., Eigenberger, T., Ervin, A. C., Leone, F., Manz, M. H., F. Muehl, M., … & Frisk, M. G. (2025). Lessons from seventy-five years of ecosystem modeling in the Northeastern US Shelf. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 82(6), fsaf078.

Manz, M. H., Shipley, O. N., Cerrato, R. M., Hueter, R. E., Newton, A. L., Tyminski, J. P., Franks, B. R., Curtis, T. H., Fischer, C., Zacharias, J. P., Scott, C., Dunton, K. J., Kneebone, J., Peterson, B. J., Scannell, B. J., Dodd, J. F., & Frisk, M. G. (2025). Predictions of southern migration timing in coastal sharks under future ocean warming. Conservation Biology, e70080. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.70080

Leonardo, N. M., & Colle, B. A. (2025). The Impact of Potential Vorticity Dipoles on the Life Cycle of Snow Multibands. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 82(6), 1175-1194.

Chen, J., Zhang, M., Zhang, T., Lin, W., & Xue, W. (2025). Stable simulation of the community atmosphere model using machine‐learning physical parameterization trained with experience replay. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 17(6), e2024MS004722.

Mages, Z., Kollias, P., Treserras, B. P., Borque, P., & Oue, M. (2025). Shallow cloud variability in Houston, Texas, during the ESCAPE and TRACER field experiments. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 25(12), 6025-6045.

Lowe, E., Rokosz, K., Hodgdon, C., Chang, H. Y., & Chen, Y. (2025). Spatiotemporal shifts in American Eel population in a changing Hudson River estuary. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, 154(3), 312-321.

Bloom, S., Alksne, M., Rice, A., Lankhorst, M., Širović, A., Warren, J., & Baumann-Pickering, S. (2025). Seasonal changes in physical oceanography modulate cetacean predator-prey dynamics in the San Diego Trough. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 762, 111-133.

Zheng, C., Kim, H., LaJoie, E., He, S., & Chang, E. K. M. (2025). Improving statistical prediction of subseasonal CONUS precipitation based on ENSO and the MJO by training with large ensemble climate simulations. Geophysical Research Letters, 52(2), e2024GL110925.

Muehl, M. F., Olin, J. A., Keyombe, J. L., Aller, J. Y., Aller, R. C., Lwiza, K. M., & Frisk, M. G. Commercial fishing influences the life histories of fish in the world’s largest desert lake. Journal of fish biology.

Abruzzo, T. R., Frisk, M. G., Butler, L., Sclafani, M., Nunnenkamp, P., Sysak, R., & Cerrato, R. M. (2025). Coupled Multivariate Analyses Reveal Separate Climate and Local Drivers of Temporal and Spatial Change in a Coastal Marine Ecosystem. Ecology and Evolution, 15(7), e71637.

 

Latest Press Headlines

Newsday: Long Island breweries navigate PFAS contamination from water used to make beer

  • Stony Brook University ecologist Christopher Gobler, an occasional beer drinker, said he was “at peace” with the possibility that there might be PFAS in his brew. “I might have a couple [beers] in a week,” he said. “I don’t need to worry, I don’t think.”

Times Beacon Record: Researcher Heather Lynch speaks on impact of federal grant cuts

  • For a research-focused doctoral university like Stony Brook University, federal cuts to grant funding creates uncertainty for research faculty relying on the money either for potential projects or current ones.

Patch: Cyanobactieria Found In Stony Brook: Suffolk County Officials

  • Analysis of surface water samples performed by the State University of New York Stony Brook has confirmed the presence of new cyanobacteria blooms, more commonly known as blue-green algae. Due to these findings, officials are asking residents not to use or recreate in the waters and to keep their children and pets away from the area.

Ground News: Cyanobactieria Found In Stony Brook: Suffolk County Officials

  • Cyanobactieria Found In Stony Brook: Suffolk County Officials – Three Village, NY – Officials are asking residents not to use or recreate in the waters and to keep their children and pets away from the area.

Times Beacon Record: SBU’s Ellen Pikitch, serving as delegate for Monaco, ‘optimistic’ about high seas

  • To borrow from the show Hamilton, Ellen Pikitch was in the room where it happens. The Endowed Professor of Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University, Pikitch traveled to the United Nations on the east side of Manhattan last month to serve as a delegate for Monaco during the Preparatory Commission for the High Seas Treaty, which is also known as Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction.

Bloomberg: Where There’s Smoke, There’s $244 Billion a Year in Damage

  • Burke was involved in a new working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, led by Minghao Qiu, an assistant professor at Stony Brook University (who also worked on the PM2.5 preprint), trying to measure the economic damage of this novel and growing danger to human health. Their findings are alarming in at least a few ways.

The Guardian: A drop in the ocean: does experimental technology hold the key to saving the world’s seas?

  • “In all sorts of mitigation approaches, everything is about scale,” said Dr Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University. “If not scaled large enough, they’ll have no effect. If over-scaled, they could push pH too high, which could create problems for certain organisms, such as sea grasses.” (Also in MSN, AOL, Inkl)

Newsday: Nearly 90% of humpback whales off Long Island scarred by entanglements, Stony Brook survey finds

  • Researchers from Stony Brook University used drones to take images of the whales swimming off the South Shore, which allowed them to capture a more comprehensive view of the animals’ bodies than is generally possible when taking photos from a boat.

New York Times: For the Sheep of Governors Island, a Final New York Summer

  • The area the sheep have foraged is adjacent to where construction will begin next year on a “living laboratory” for climate solutions. In 2023 the city chose a consortium led by Stony Brook University for a 400,000-square-foot hub called the New York Climate Exchange, which describes itself as “part think tank, part do-tank.” The new campus is expected to open in 2029.

East Hampton Star: Despite Rain, Water Quality Holds Steady

  • C.C.O.M., in partnership with the Gobler Laboratory at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, also monitors Fort Pond for toxic blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, in the summer.

Times Beacon Record: Long Island’s solid waste future to be discussed at 2025 Larry Swanson Environmental Symposium on June 25

  • Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, Stony Brook University’s Waste Reduction and Management Institute and the Evan R. Liblit Scholarship Fund have announced the 2025 Larry Swanson Long Island Environmental Symposium will be held on Wednesday, June 25 at Suffolk County Community College’s Brentwood Campus  from 8 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

South Shore Press: Stony Brook scholars urge global effort at UN conference on coral reef protection

  • Two scholars from Stony Brook University have called for increased international cooperation to protect endangered coral reefs. This appeal was made at the third United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) held in Nice, France.

Morning Ag Clips: Study Shows Controlled Burns Can Reduce Wildfire Intensity and Smoke Pollution

  • Coauthors of the study also include Minghao Qiu of Stony Brook University, Iván Higuera-Mendieta, a PhD student in Earth system science at Stanford; and Tianjia Liu of the University of British Columbia.

Daily Mail: Three sharks wash up on Hamptons beach in front of shocked onlookers

  • ‘If there are sharks in your area, it means it’s a healthy ecosystem,’ Christopher Paparo, manager of the Marine Sciences Center at Stony Brook University, told DailyMail.com (Also in MSN)

Science Daily: Fighting fire with fire: How prescribed burns reduce wildfire damage and pollution

  • Coauthors of the study also include Minghao Qiu of Stony Brook University, Iván Higuera-Mendieta, a PhD student in Earth system science at Stanford; and Tianjia Liu of the University of British Columbia.

School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, SoMAS, at Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-5000, USA
Phone: 631-632-8700
somas@stonybrook.edu