Dr. Casey Brown of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department has been making waves in the water management field. He was quoted in the February 6 edition of Discover magazine, which predicted that global warming during the next seven decades could cause the water supply in the Northeast to undergo drastic changes even as total precipitation stays about the same. The Discover article said that a warmer atmosphere will hold more moisture, unleashing intense but less frequent rainstorms. Droughts could become more common, but so could storms like Hurricane Irene, which caused record flooding in the region this August. “Water suppliers should be thinking hard about managing these extremes,” said Brown. “It will only get worse.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Brown contributed to the process of “managing these extremes” by chairing three sessions on “The Evolution of Water Management Paradigms" at the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) Fall Meeting 2011 in San Francisco.
Brown also chaired the initial meeting of the Water and Society Technical Committee of' the Hydrology Section of the AGU. The goal of the committee is to promote the scientific study of water management and cooperation among researchers and students in this field.
His research specialties are hydroclimatologic variability and change, climate risk management in infrastructure systems, water, climate and economic development, and sustainable water resources planning and management. Brown is the recipient of a 2011 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Grant, a 2006 Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering, and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship from 2001 to 2004.
The AGU Fall Meeting is the largest worldwide conference in the geophysical sciences, attracting nearly 20,000 earth and space scientists, educators, students, and policy makers. This meeting showcases current scientific theory focused on discoveries that will benefit humanity and ensure a sustainable future for our planet. (February 2012)
