Dr. Rachel Clemesha studies marine layer clouds, fog, and the climate of Western North America.
Rachel joined our group in January 2011 as a Climate Science PhD student. Her research first focused on the volatility of weather extremes as a part of the the Scripps Partnership for Hazards and Environmental Applied Research (SPHEAR). During the summers of 2011 and 2012 she first began her research on marine layer clouds through internships at the local utility, San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E). In 2012 she was awarded a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship to continue her studies of these low level clouds as her PhD research. In August 2015 Rachel successfully defended her PhD dissertation entitled: “California Coastal Low Clouds: Variability and Influences across Climate to Weather and Continental to Local Scales.”
Rachel is the Scripps PI of the multi-institutional research project Coastal Fog: Basic science, water resources, and future change. The overall objectives of the Scripps research team are to determine how changes in coastal fog and low cloud cover (FLCC) along California connect to regional and global-scale climate processes in (1) historical observations and (2) future projections.
Rachel and Sasha are Scripps Co-PIs of the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (SW CASC). The SW CASC is a collaborative federal-university partnership between the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and a consortium of academic institutions across the U.S. southwest.