Oswaldo Garcia

Emeritus since 1998

Education

B.S. Applied Geophysics, Columbia University
M.S. and Ph.D, Atmospheric Science, State University of NY at Albany

Research and Teaching Area

In Fall 2012 I completed eight years as chair of the Department of Geosciences. This position helped me get a broader perspective on the issues facing geoscience education across the country. Natural disasters such as the 2011 Japan quake and tsunami and hurricane Sandy in 2012 highlight the need to to provide our students with best possible education so they can contribute to the solution of these problems

In recent years I have had the opportunity to visit Cuba, my native country, and to establish collegial working relationships with Cuban meteorologists. I am working with American colleagues to extend to Cuba the network of ground based GPS receiving stations (known as "COCONet") that can detect in real time the amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere. Since water vapor is the "fuel" of hurricanes, the COCONet network should help in improving hurricane forecasting in the Caribbean basin. With the hep of two of our students, I am also looking at the practical uses of soundings of the atmosphere obtained by the COSMIC satellite network that use GPS technology to obtain data that was previously only available through weather balloons.