Henrik Panosyan's CAS Internship with NOAAs Climate Services Branch

In the summers of 2019 & 2020, CAS trainee Henrik Panosyan interned with NOAAs Climate Services Branch. The Climate Services Branch oversees the NWS Climate Services Program, as well as climate prediction operation plans, policies, and procedures. Its core mission is to ensure NWS has the ability to create and deliver the most efficient and high-accuracy climate products and services through policy, planning, data stewardship, integration of research and services, training, education, and collaboration with various other NOAA offices, partners, and users.

Henrik's work utilized NOAAs Arctic Addition to the National Weather Service's Local Climate Analysis Tool (LCAT). This tool focuses on US owned regions of the Arctic Ocean and allows users to analyze surface air temperature, ice cover proportion, ice cover thickness, water potential salinity, and temperature in the context of climate change and variability.

Henrik's main assignment was to create a learning module that could train users on how to use the Arctic Addition to the LCAT, while demonstrating the implications of a changing and more variable climate on the variables listed above.