UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Over the summer, three Penn State graduate students participated in a workshop focused on the planetary boundary layer (PBL). This National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored workshop, originally scheduled to take place at Howard University with early-career, underrepresented graduate students from several minority-serving institutions, explored the PBL through theory, measurements and modeling.

The PBL is the part of the atmosphere that is closest to the Earth. It is affected by the Earth’s temperature and moisture, and the wind in the PBL is turbulent and erratic due to friction from the surface of the Earth and its topography and vegetation.

Each of the graduate students, all in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS), is researching impactful aspects of atmospheric science.

Read more: Grad students explore atmospheric science, community at collaborative workshop