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CELEBRATING OVER 55 YEARS OF DISTINCTION - REQUEST INFORMATION

HIGHLIGHT VIDEO OF MU EARTH SCIENCES DEPARTMENT

At MU, you are more than just a number. Learn how faculty care for their students and prepare them for their careers in the video above.

Air pollution study at mu

Millersville University's Earth Sciences Department has begun monitoring levels of air pollution in Lancaster County. See the link below for more details.

Greg AQ Research

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Millersville Alumni heads forecast office at the space weather prediction center

"Mike Bettwy’s career path was never in doubt. The Millersville University alumnus says he remembers being as young as five or six years old and discovering his interest in math, science and especially the weather, clouds and nature. Ever since the first grade, Bettwy knew he wanted to go into meteorology and forecasting the weather. Today, he works as the head of the Forecast Office at the Space Weather Prediction Center."

STUDENTS Attend and PRESENT AT NATIONAL meetingS

students collage

Students from the Millersville University Earth Sciences Department presented their research at the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) 2022 National Conference in Savannah, the 2023 Annual Meeting of Geological Society of America (GSA) Meeting in Pittsburgh, the 2024 Ocean Sciences Meeting in New Orleans, and the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in Baltimore.

project tiltting students Storm chase in the great plains

Remember the group of Millersville meteorology students who chased the EF-3 tornado in Mullica Hill, NJ, during Hurricane Ida? Under the leadership of Weather Information Center Director Kyle Elliott, they created the Thermodynamic Investigation of LCL Thresholds at Tornadogenesis and its Influence in the Northeast and Great Plains (TILTTING) project. For details on the project and how to support the students, visit TILTTING (millersville.edu/tiltting). Nearly 20 students are involved in the project, and 7 of them deployed to the Great Plains for a two-week period during May 2024 to conduct tornado research. Under the guidance of Dr. Greg Blumberg, this "chase team" released balloons to obtain atmospheric profiles of temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind velocity near supercells to assess the storm environment. While in the Plains, the students visited the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) in Norman, OK, and talked with forecasters on the operations floor. They met with two of the senior leads at the SPC - John Hart and Rich Thompson - and toured the vehicle bays at the National Weather Center to see the mobile radars and mesonets. On chase days, the team shared the data collected with SPC and local National Weather Service (NWS) offices. Overall, four Intensive Observation Periods (IOPs) were conducted during the two-week period, and the team is aiming to present their findings at upcoming conferences.

TILTTING Plains

The students have also designed their own probes that will eventually be used to penetrate and measure wind velocity and pressure perturbations within the condensation funnel of a tornado. IOPs have and will continue to be conducted in the Northeast, with teams of 6-10 students deploying on a rotating basis. Three IOPs took place in the Northeast during Summer 2022, with another three happening during Summer 2023. Incorporation of this data into numerical weather prediction models will increase accuracy of severe weather forecasts, improve tornado warning lead times and, most importantly, save lives.