Weather Source is pleased to announce the addition of Rodrigo J. Bombardi, PhD as Director of Climate Science. Dr. Bombardi brings with him a substantial breadth of knowledge and experience and will be a key player in the growth and development of many of the solutions and initiatives of our newly formed Climate Risk Product Suite.
Most recently, Rodrigo was an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University in the Department of Geography. His research focused on climate variability, predictability and development of models. Dr. Bombardi notes that he is most interested in research that has immediate applications to societal needs and his passion is utilizing his skills in climate science to develop products and services for real-world use and that have an immediate demand to help the greater good. For example, he has performed research that improved predictions of the timing and amount of precipitation for the rainy season. This allows for better informed decisions that impact global food security, electricity generation, and water management.
A focus of Dr. Bombardi’s research has surrounded the prediction of monsoon systems and monsoon representation in climate models with a focus on understanding the sources of monsoon variability and investigating ways of improving the prediction of monsoon systems. Dr. Bombadi has worked on problems related to atmospheric convection on a range of timescales from convective parameterization issues to sub-seasonal and seasonal predictability; and has made use of regional atmospheric models and global coupled climate models as well as multivariate analysis.
As an integral part of the Weather Source team, Dr. Bombardi will be focused on guiding the development of Weather Source’s growing Climate Risk Product Suite. Climate change has accelerated significantly over the past 10 years which has increased the demand for information on how climate change will affect the frequency and magnitude of impactful weather events such as hurricanes, droughts, floods and severe weather, which is crucial for both commercial and governmental planning needs.
Definitely no less ambitious in his free time, Dr. Bombardi is an avid reader and is passionate about storytelling and he consumes all things related to stories – from TV shows and movies to comic books and novels. Last summer he even wrote a non-fiction comic book about the life and work of Lewis Fry Richardson, the first person to build a weather forecast based on the solution of differential equations (very close to the method we use today). This was part of an educational project to create outreach material for science literacy.
Additionally he likes to spend time in his leisure drawing and playing the guitar. Welcome to the team Dr. Bombardi, we look forward to working with you on the many projects and initiatives that Weather Source will be pursuing now and in the future.
