Andy Wood (MSE, PhD) is currently divides his time between a project scientist position in the NCAR CGD laboratory and a research professor position in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Previously, he had split time with the NCAR Research Applications Laboratory, RAL. He is an expert in streamflow forecasting, hydrologic modeling and applications, land monitoring and prediction (eg, for flood and droughts), climate change downscaling and impact assessment, water resources management and planning, and seasonal climate and hydrologic forecasting. His current work focuses on improving data, models and methods for hydrologic prediction and climate impact assessments, including advancing the implementation of hydrology in Earth System Models.
After graduating as an English major from Amherst College, Andy's MSE and PhD degrees from the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington focused on water resources, systems engineering, hydrologic monitoring and prediction, and the assessment of climatic change impacts. Andy has nearly 20 years of experience in these areas in the academic, private, and public settings. His major accomplishments include the development of the well-known BCSD technique for statistical downscaling of climate projections, which has been widely used in the US. He is also known for the creation of streamflow forecasting and drought monitoring systems such as the UW Surface Water Monitor, the first national-scale application of modern land surface models for drought monitoring and prediction.
After his masters degree, Andy spent 2 years as a researcher with the US Army Corps of Engineers Institute for Water Resources (IWR), focusing on the assessment of wetland storage for flood control, and on modeling and long-range prediction of Devils Lake levels and flood risk. After the PhD, he worked for four years as a research assistant professor in the UW Dept. of Civil Engineering, focusing on research to improve real-time hydrologic monitoring and prediction systems. He left UW to work for two years as a senior and later the lead scientist of the Seattle firm 3TIER, Inc., focusing on forecasting and assessment of hydropower, solar and wind energy. He then spent three years as a Development and Operations Hydrologist (DOH) with the NOAA National Weather Service River Forecast Centers in Salt Lake City, and Portland, Oregon, helping to manage streamflow forecasting operations and contribute to new capability development. He then joined NCAR in 2013.
Outside of his employment, Andy has invested steadingly in serving the field of hydrometeorology. He chaired the Hydrology Committee of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) between 2010-2013, and was an editor with the AMS Journal of Hydrometeorology. He co-led the international Hydrologic Ensemble Prediction Experiment, which promotes the application of ensemble forecasting for water management, from 2011-2020. He was also a co-leader of the first NOAA MAPP Drought Task force. He has served on various scientific advisory boards, such as the Horizon 2020 IMPREX Project (http://www.imprex.eu) -- Improving the Predictability of Extremes -- and of the ECWMF EFAS/GLOFAS effort, and now the CEMS Flood Forecasting Centre. He co-chaired the US CLIVAR Predictions, Projections and Applications Interface (PPAI) Panel. Andy is now leading the Technical Development component of a WMO initiative to develop a global operational Hydrologic Status and Outlook System (HydroSOS), and a member of the WMO Standing Committee on Earth System Modeling and Prediction (SC-ESMP). Over the last 20 years, Andy has co-organized dozens of national and international conference sessions and workshops on hydroclimate prediction and applications.
Andy recently held an Adjoint Assistant Professor position with the University of Colorado - Boulder Dept. of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (CEAE), and he has served on the degree exam committees for nearly 30 graduate students at various universities.
