Nirajan Dhakal, Ph.D., assistant professor of Environmental and Health Sciences, has received a $499,489 grant from the National Science Foundation that will help to advance scientific understanding of extreme precipitation characteristics and its relation to large-scale factors, including oceanic-atmospheric oscillations and tropical cyclones.
The project is titled HBCU-Excellence in Research: Improved Understanding of the Changing Seasonality and Magnitude of Precipitation Extremes in the Eastern United States. Dr. Dhakal will develop and apply innovative statistical approaches to estimate the frequency, magnitude and seasonality of extreme precipitation events over the eastern United States.
According to Dr. Dhakal, “I expect that this research will have significant societal impacts due to the value of extreme event statistics for anticipating and mitigating precipitation-related hazards and our research has specific focus on stormwater management as a transportation issue.”