Student researches storms

Sean Spitzer/The Lantern Rachel Mauk studied weather while interning at NASA last summer.

Some kids become enamored with dinosaurs; others collect coins, paint pictures, or develop a life-long addiction to video games.

Rachel Mauk liked severe weather.

"I knew early on that I wanted to go into meteorology," she said. "I was eight, and I'd be sitting at home watching the Weather Channel. Hurricanes, every summer - it was pretty neat."

Mauk, a senior in geography and physics, is researching tropical storms that form in parts of the Atlantic Ocean between the months of October and December.

"It's not as freakish as it might seem," she said. "Over the past 30 years, we've had 20 systems form out there."

Her advisor Jay Hobgood, associate professor of geography, said Mauk's work is important in part because she "is studying hurricanes that form over parts of the ocean that were thought to be too cold to produce hurricanes."

"Rachel's research may also provide some insight on where we might expect to see hurricanes in the future as the Earth's climate changes," he said.

Mauk said making definite statements about the effects global warming might have on the formation of hurricanes is not easy.

The hurricane record is really incomplete," she said. "It's very difficult to talk about climate change, because we only have about 40 years of solid data."

During her time at OSU Mauk has also interned at NASA, worked at the Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, participated in the OSU Meteorology Club, took an Irish dance class and minored in English. She will compete for a Denman research award this spring.

"I guess I do overextend myself a little sometimes," Mauk said, smiling. "But that's what I love about Ohio State. I really got to do a bit of everything here."

She said the NASA internship came as a surprise.

"I was in the worst mood that day, and I came home to get this e-mail," she said. "I thought it was going to be a rejection letter, and when it wasn't that just made my week."

While at NASA, Mauk and her fellow interns used satellite data to predict how deep snow cover is in any given area. While noting that satellite data had "significant errors" that prevented the project from being a complete success, she said satellites "are being improved all the time."

"We'll get it eventually," she said. "It's was really interesting to see what government research is like. I had this strong suspicion that government research is different from academic research, and (in many ways) it is."

Mauk credits geography with her current path, though she began her tenure at OSU as a physics major.

"I knew I liked science a lot, and if you can do physics you're set for pretty much anything," she said. "Then I realized OSU had meteorology through the geography department ... One of my favorite subject in seventh grade was geography. I just love staring at any kind of map. My prized possessions in my dorm were the world map and the U.S. map."

Mauk will begin working toward a masters degree in atmospheric science at OSU in the fall. When asked what she wants to do when she "grows up," she laughed.

"I don't know when that's going to be," she said. "What I want to do in the end is hurricane research, either academically or as a consultant."

Rachel Lichtenfeld can be reached at lichtenfeld.6@osu.edu.