Throughout her career, Wing has contributed to large, collaborative research projects such as the Radiative-Convective Equilibrium Model Intercomparison Project, or RCEMIP, which she has led for a decade. RCEMIP compares how different weather and climate models simulate a simplified version of the tropical atmosphere; this allows researchers to learn new information about how warming changes tropical clouds and how cloud clustering affects climate and rainfall.
In 2024, Wing led the Process Investigation of Clouds and Convective Organization over the atLantic Ocean, or PICCOLO — the U.S. component of the ORganized Convection and EarthCARE Studies over the TRopical Atlantic, or ORCESTRA, project, an international field campaign. Using Colorado State University’s Sea-Pol Radar on the German research ship Meteor, Wing collected cloud and rain measurements, spanning from Barbados in the Caribbean to Cape Verde off Africa’s western coast. Researchers used this data to test hypotheses about the development of cloud clusters and how they influence Atlantic rainfall, tropical circulation features and climate.
Allison Wing on board the German High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft, or HALO, preparing to release a dropsonde during the ORCESTRA/PERCUSION field campaign in September 2024. Dropsondes are small research instruments that can transmit real-time data for pressure, humidity and wind speed, among others. (Photo by Daniel Klocke)
“Allison’s research tackles fundamental questions about how tropical cyclones form and intensify and how they might be responding to a changing climate,” Stukel said. “She brings an unusually powerful combination of fundamental theory, sophisticated numerical modeling and observations to these problems, allowing her to connect basic atmospheric physics with some of the most consequential weather hazards affecting society.”
A key finding from Wing’s research, supported through projects such as RCEMIP and PICCOLO, is that interactions between clouds and thermal radiation heavily contribute to the clustering of thunderstorms into larger, more organized systems. This also influences the early stages of hurricane development, well before they undergo rapid intensification. These results suggest that hurricane forecasts could be improved by better accounting for cloud-radiation interactions at a storm’s genesis in weather models.
“I am grateful for the privilege to collaborate with and learn from many outstanding scientists throughout my career,” Wing said. “Much of my work has been in the form of big, collaborative projects, so receiving the AGU Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award is, in part, a reflection of the research opportunities I have participated in and led. The award also reflects the exciting work of my students and postdocs, and mentoring them is the most rewarding thing I do.”
In 2024, Wing earned an FSU Developing Scholar Award, and two years before, she received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, Award. Before joining FSU as an assistant professor in 2016, Wing was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. She earned her doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in atmospheric sciences in 2014.
For more information on research conducted in the FSU Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science, visit eoas.fsu.edu.
