Welcome!

Derek is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Utah's Department of Atmospheric Sciences. The general theme of Derek's research is to better understand the fundamental processes that drive wildfire behavior, and exceptional air quality events, such as smoke and wind-blown dust. Derek is particularly interested in developing tools that improve the predictability of wildfires and air quality. More broadly, Derek is interested in addressing forecast challenges related to weather across a range of spatial and temporal scales. Wildfires and wind-blown dust are societally relevant challenges with far-reaching impacts on communities across the U.S. Climate change is poised to fuel more intense wildfires and increase the frequency of wind-blown dust events in the coming decades. Therefore, there is a critical need to develop and refine modeling tools that advance the understanding and forecasting of the processes driving wildfires and wind-blown dust.

A large portion of Derek's Ph.D. work centered around developing modeling tools to assess the impacts of wildfire smoke and wind-blown dust on air quality. These tools served as the foundation for a series of studies demonstrating that wildfire smoke is degrading air quality across the western U.S. and that taller wildfire plume rises are lofting smoke higher into the atmosphere. Derek works with a variety of modeling approaches, including simplified parameterizations that can be applied to regional/global applications, as well as fine-scale NWP tools that can resolve coupled fire–atmosphere interactions. Derek is also interested in leveraging ML/AI techniques to (1) build more sophisticated fire-weather parameterizations and (2) train emulators on state-of-the-art atmospheric models. Derek is also working on topics related to wind-blown dust, including studying how a shrinking Great Salt Lake is impacting dust exposure communities across the western U.S.

More details on Derek's current research, including ongoing projects and publications, can be found on the tabs at the top of this webpage.

WRF-SFIRE smoke simulation of the 2018 Pole Creek in Spanish Fork, Utah. Black arrows represent wind vectors will the color-filled contours correspond to PM2.5 concentrations.