BIENNIAL REPORT 2016-2017

Everyone talks about the weather, but Michael Colbert has more than a casual interest in that topic — he studied it at Stony Brook University.  To be sure, the atmospheric and oceanic sciences major can’t remember a time when he wasn’t passionate about the weather.  “My mother says that as a baby, there were times when I wouldn’t fall asleep unless she took me outside to look up at the sky first,” Michael said.

When he was in elementary school, Michael used writing assignments as an opportunity to report on atmospheric conditions. “What was the weatherman predicting for tomorrow? How long were the icicles hanging off my roof? How strong were the winds last night?”

Michael Colbert uses the School of Journalism’s green screen for a weather forecast

Michael said that growing up in a waterfront home on the Neguntatogue Creek in Lindenhurst, New York — which gave him a front-row seat to view nature’s full force — influenced his decision to pursue atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

“On the coast, you often see precipitation transition from snow to sleet to rain, and then back the other way as cold air comes in at the end of a storm. You also get to see coastal flooding and experience more intense winds found near the ocean,” he said. “During the warm season, the sea breeze can trigger thunderstorms, and that happens to be the topic of my Honors College senior research project — what are the factors that allow some sea breeze boundaries to trigger thunderstorms?”

The Internet has made it easy for Michael to watch the weather unfold minute by minute on satellite and radar. As early as his freshman year in high school, he paid special attention to weather trends, which led to him posting forecasts on Facebook.

When Michael arrived at Stony Brook, he created SBUWeather, a Facebook page managed by the Meteorology Club, which provides forecasts to more than 700 students, staff and faculty on campus and to surrounding communities.  Posting through social media helped provide more exposure for the Stony Brook Meteorology Club which enabled it to grow its current membership to 40 weather buffs. After he was elected president, he and his expanded club created a Web page on which they post forecasts.

Under Michael’s leadership, the club made its debut at the Involvement Fair, wearing T-shirts the members created.  Feeding on a growing interest in the club, Michael began organizing field trips to regional conferences; the National Weather Service in Upton, New York; and local news stations to observe live forecasts. In 2013 “we visited ABC in New York City, and” in fall 2014 “we took a trip to News 12,” he said.  To further increase its exposure, Michael initiated the club’s participation in Earthstock the past two years. The club competed in the 2014 Roth Regatta with a boat named “Hurricane Force.”

In 2014 Michael served an internship at the Upton National Weather Service facility, where he collected data using instruments called radiosondes, which are battery-powered devices carried into the atmosphere that transmit findings by radio to a ground receiver. He is also the proud recipient of the Timothy Magnussen Memorial Scholarship for undergraduate students majoring in atmospheric sciences.  During the summer of 2014, he conducted research at Colorado State University, exploring the volume of hail in thunderstorms and associated lightning flash rates. These findings were presented at the American Meteorological Society annual meeting in Phoenix, AZ, in January 2015.

Michael helped coordinate a joint effort with the School of Journalism to provide broadcast experience to atmospheric and oceanic science majors.

“Even though the National Weather Service is my first choice to start my career path, every time I’m in a newsroom I get an overwhelming feeling of excitement, so I hope I get that opportunity to do that at some point in my life,” he said.  Michael started his graduate studies at Penn State in the fall of 2015.

“The weather is something that affects everyone every day. It never stops changing, so I can never stop watching it,” he said.

From Michael Colbert ’15 Is Doing Something About the Weather by Glenn Jochum; photo by John Griffin

Morgan Gelinas (MS, 2011) studied ship wakes in the Venice Lagoon, Italy.  Here, very large ships routinely navigate a deep dredged channel cut through a shallow lagoon.  The wakes they create propagate over the adjacent shoals for long distances, resuspending sediment as they go.  Morgan described these wakes as Bernoulli waves, or non-linear N-waves, using the same equations that govern the propagation of tsunamis over the deep-ocean basins (Gelinas, M, H. Bokuniewicz, J. Rapaglia, and K.M.M. Lwiza, 2013. Sediment Resuspension by Ship Wakes in the Venice Lagoon Journal of Coastal Research: Volume 29, Issue 1: 8-17. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11-00213.1).

She is now a scientist specializing in marine geology and hydrodynamic processes working for EA Engineering, Science and Technology, Inc.  EA has offices from Guam to Maryland and Morgan is leading many of their field efforts.  Her professional duties include such a diverse array of studies such as sediment testing, ocean permitting, marine bathymetric surveys, aquatic site characterizations, interpreting ecotoxicological and bioaccumulation/tissue testing and analysis. Morgan is currently working on a site characterization study in Duluth, MN in the St. Louis River/Lake Superior area, but she has been in most of the Great Lakes in the past two summers on EPA projects. She routinely pilots the boat for bathymetric work or coring all over in the Chesapeake Bay, Gulf of Mexico and greater NYC area.

Greg Marshall with his crittercam

Greg Marshall is the Executive Director and Producer of Remote Imaging at National Geographic Television and Film.  In 1991, Greg began working with National Geographic Television and established the Special Projects Unit, where he developed the technology known as the Crittercam.  The Crittercam is a revolutionary tool that has been used to study the behavior of almost 40 different marine and terrestrial species in their natural habitat.

He has received two Emmy Awards for the National Geographic specials Great White Sharks and Sea Monsters:  Search for the Giant Squid.  Greg also produced the film Tiger Shark and a 13-part series called Crittercam for National Geographic television.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Georgetown University.  Greg earned his master’s degree (1988) in marine environmental sciences from the Marine Sciences Research Center at Stony Brook University.  His research focused on the factors influencing the burying behavior of juvenile queen conch, Strombus gigas.

Greg Marshall returned to SoMAS in 2017 to help us celebrate our 50th Anniversary as the Akira Okubo Distinguished Scholar.