Taylor O'Brien
Graduate Student
About Taylor
Taylor O’Brien is a graduate research assistant at NSIDC. She is completing her master’s degree in geography at the University of Colorado Boulder under her advisor Dr. Mark Serreze. O’Brien is from North Carolina and completed her bachelor’s degree in geography with a climatology concentration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Taylor enjoys engaging with community members and sharing scientific knowledge.
Specialties
Current Research
Bridging Local Observations and Meteorology: Insights from the LEO network: Interest is growing in extreme events in the Arctic and their impacts on communities and ecosystems. However, what is identified as an extreme event in terms of meteorological observations may be quite different from what is viewed as an extreme event by those who are experiencing it. This study seeks to understand these different perspectives of why, for example, we find that extreme events in meteorology are not necessarily expressed in terms of pronounced impacts at the surface. By contrast, why might events not identified as extreme from the meteorology have pronounced impacts on communities? This study seeks to understand these different perspectives by using self organizing maps (SOMs) to analyze synoptic states of extreme events.
