Information and Background

Programs of Study

The Department of Meteorology at Penn State is one of the oldest and largest in the country. It offers individually tailored graduate programs of academic study leading to the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. The requirements for the two degrees are quite different. A person granted an M.S. degree will have demonstrated a broad, thorough knowledge of the major areas within the atmospheric sciences as well as an ability to complete and summarize a research study. Accordingly, an M.S. candidate must write a thesis or paper approved by two members of the Graduate Faculty and the Department Head. The Master's program usually requires two and one-half years to complete.

A person granted a Ph.D. degree will have demonstrated, in addition to the broad level of knowledge required of an M.S. candidate, both an expertise in an area of the discipline and an ability to perform independent, creative research within that area. Accordingly, the successful Ph.D. candidate must pass four exams, the Candidacy, Technical English Competency, Comprehensive, and Final Oral Exams, and must write a dissertation summarizing the performed research. The Ph.D. committee has at least four members of Graduate Faculty and is normally chaired by the candidate's adviser. The Ph.D. program may require up to five years to complete or six years if an M.S. is earned as well.

Together with a strong tradition of excellence in teaching and advising, the faculty has both a strong commitment to fundamental research and an active role in national and international scientific administration. Faculty advisers will help you develop an understanding of both basic and advanced material. The department's goal is to give you the broad-based knowledge and research tools to understand and solve contemporary problems in the atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

The diverse teaching and research interests of the faculty and the varied research activities of students encompass the full range of specialty areas in the atmospheric sciences. With faculty specializing in dynamic and physical meteorology, the theory of large-scale and mesoscale motions, synoptic and numerical weather analysis and prediction, tropical meteorology, climate theory and modeling, radiative transfer, oceanography and its relationship to climate, atmospheric turbulence, the theory and practice of direct and remote atmospheric measurements and sounding, the theory and laboratory study of atmospheric precipitation mechanisms, and atmospheric chemistry, you will have an expert on hand for help on almost any topic in the atmospheric science that arises. A general open-door policy by all faculty encourages students to interact with faculty from a wide range of specialities.

Several members of the graduate faculty are associates of the Earth System Science Center, which was developed within the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences to foster interactions among faculty and students with diverse interests in the earth sciences. Other interdisciplinary programs are encouraged in applied mathematics, fluid mechanics, air pollution and atmospheric chemistry, and biometeorology.

Preparation for Graduate Studies in Meteorology

Graduate education in Meteorology builds upon a foundation in the physical, mathematical and computational sciences. Students will experience the smoothest transition into their graduate studies if they have a broad background in these fields. Topics of particular utility include basic physics through mechanics and electromagnetics, mathematics through partial differential equations, and tensors. Depending on one’s research interests, chemistry, linear algebra or matrices, statistics, and numerical analysis will also prove valuable. No matter what the subject area in Meteorology, a working knowledge of at least one computer language is essential.

If your undergraduate degree did not cover one or more of these areas, you should study them on your own. Schaum’s Outlines provide one cost and time effective means of doing so. Volumes are available on Matrix Operations, Linear Algebra, Numerical Analysis, Partial Differential Equations, Tensor Calculus, Statistics, and a number of other mathematical fields. The Visual QuickStart series fills the same role in learning computer languages on your own. Volumes are available for C, PHP, Python, Perl, and Visual Basic. Commercial standards today for analysis and visualization of scientific data sets include MatLab and IDL; these two programming environments are now common in academia, government and industry.

The Meteorology faculty at Penn State strongly recommends that first year students read Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey (published by Wallace and Hobbs) before the start of their first semester in graduate school. This text explores many of the basic concepts of meteorology. Even if already familiar with these concepts, students new to Meteorology will benefit from reading this book. If a student is looking for a more advanced treatment, look at Fundamentals of Atmospheric Physics by Salby (published by Academic Press). Both of these are used as texts for survey courses taught to students with non-meteorology backgrounds.

Research Facilities

For more than sixty years the Department of Meteorology has encouraged the development of special sensors and measurement systems to support diverse theoretical studies and observational programs. Today instruments sited at the Larson Agricultural Research Center near Rockspring, near Scotia in the Pennsylvania State Game Lands (#176), at a wind profiler site near McAlevys Fort, and at Walker Building provide essentially continuous measurements of state parameters, winds, turbulence, radiation, sky cover, air quality, precipitation chemistry, various profiles, etc. Some of the continuously operating systems include an ASOS (Automated Surface Observing System) donated to the department by AAI, Inc., a SURFace RADiation system installed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a NOAA/CORE system for air quality monitoring, and numerous precipitation and deposition samplers. Specialized sensors which are operated intermittantly for graduate and faculty research projects include radar and radiometric profilers, mmWave (94 GHz) Doppler radars, multichannel microwave radiometers, multiple sonic anemometers, acoustic sounders (sodars), a diverse set of laser-based sensors for gas and particle measurements, etc.

Cost of Study

Tuition fees for full-time graduate study in 2005-2006 are $6,259 per semester for Pennsylvania residents and $11502 per semester for US nonresidents. Fees for international students may be found on the Visa Document Application page. Graduate students who receive assistantships do not pay tuition. With few exceptions, graduate students receive
teaching or research assistantships, or fellowships.

Living and Housing Costs

University dormitories and private rooms are available to single students, and inexpensive University apartments are available to married students. Off-campus apartments are also available. Application for graduate housing should be made as soon as possible.

Student Group

The average graduate enrollment in the department is about 65; half are M.S. candidates, and the other half are Ph.D. candidates. Students from every state of the Union and many countries have been in residence.

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