Quinton Lawton, PhD
@quintonlawton.com
1.7K followers 240 following 41 posts
ASP Postdoctoral Fellow at NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, studying tropical waves and hurricanes. Meteorologist and T1D. Let’s talk weather!
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
knubez.bsky.social
🚨 New Study Alert!

Our study with @zmoon92.bsky.social & @edougherty.bsky.social offers new insights into how
African Easterly Waves (AEWs), the seeds of Atlantic hurricanes 🌀, are being shaped by a warmer, moister climate.

doi.org/10.1029/2025...
doi.org
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
andrewdessler.com
The Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M has a YouTube channel. Check out our first video! Starring @knubez.bsky.social along with many faculty and students!

youtu.be/_e57SmX2Ijw?...
Texas A&M Atmospheric Sciences
YouTube video by TAMU Atmospheric Sciences
youtu.be
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
wxliz.bsky.social
Just a reminder that NWS is considered essential during a government shutdown. Meteorologists will still go to work, forecasts will still be made, watches and warnings will be issued, data will flow. We won’t be paid until the shutdown ends, but we’ll still protect life and property as always.
quintonlawton.com
It's not often we get a stratiform rain day like this! I'm quite enjoying it
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
ametsoc.org
Much appreciation for AMS Editor's Award recipient Rosimar Rios-Berrios for meticulous, thoughtful, constructive reviews 🤩

Learn more: bit.ly/48gR7vJ

#JAtmosSci #PeerReviewWeek
Graphic for the Peer Review Week congratulating Rosimar Rios-Berrios, NSF NCAR, with a citation.
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
cloudprophet.bsky.social
🌍 The MMM lab at @ncar-ucar.bsky.social is running experimental realtime forecasts with a global 3.75-km MPAS model.

Goal: Highlight the power of global km-scale models for weather prediction from local to planetary scales, incl. tropical cyclones.

👉 project.mmm.ucar.edu/real-time-fo...
quintonlawton.com
Likely, but not 100% sure yet!
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
wxliz.bsky.social
Leaving negative comments isn’t really helpful. It takes zero effort to be kind and just scroll past. I choose to remain hopeful and love what I do, because the people that matter most are the ones I took an oath to serve - the American public.
quintonlawton.com
Don’t remember much about JAX, but 100% agree about SLC being a great airport!
quintonlawton.com
Funny, I was just looking at the Boulder forecast and wondering this. Feels really far out for a severe mention, but then again I’m a tropical guy…
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
bmcnoldy.bsky.social
Attention hurricane enthusiasts, connoisseurs, experts: the Atlantic season is entering the active months (Aug-Sep-Oct) so what better time to remind you of this Starter Pack so you can get reliable information and insights!
go.bsky.app/88mXQKD
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
quintonlawton.com
Our research on the connection between African easterly waves (AEW) and ENSO was accepted! Using a wave tracker, we show that there is increased circulation, moisture, and convection around AEWs during La Niña, especially in the wave's mid- to low- levels near Africa. This may have TC implications.
journals.ametsoc.org
quintonlawton.com
I have nothing to add to the existing comments other than to say: welcome to MPAS world :)
quintonlawton.com
I am especially proud of this work because of the contributions from Brooke Weiser, a former @miamirosenstiel.bsky.social undergraduate student who I had the honor of mentoring in research a few years ago. Our collaboration continued as I moved to @ncar-ucar.bsky.social and she started her career!
quintonlawton.com
This paper also reflects an update to our easterly wave tracker, which now has been updated to work in the eastern Pacific. We also have produced tracks for both ERA5 and MERRA2. A climatology is shown below. The software is available as a python module (via pip). github.com/qlawton/QTrack
quintonlawton.com
We believe these AEW changes are connected to shifts in regional circulation, including the African easterly jet and west African monsoon. While previous work has looked at ENSO and wave "activity", our use of a wave-tracker allowed us to directly quantify wave attributes and structure.
quintonlawton.com
Our research on the connection between African easterly waves (AEW) and ENSO was accepted! Using a wave tracker, we show that there is increased circulation, moisture, and convection around AEWs during La Niña, especially in the wave's mid- to low- levels near Africa. This may have TC implications.
journals.ametsoc.org
quintonlawton.com
Breaking my bluesky silence to say: what was the thought process behind this 💀
quintonlawton.com
As always, thanks for this. Just want to add that the NSF request document also has detailed info on proposed cuts to major facilities like NCAR (40% cut). nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
jimmy-yunge.bsky.social
A quick heads up on some tropical weather social media posts you may see around this time of year. The GFS (U.S.) model is known to over-intensify storms in the western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in May and June. This means sometimes it will show a strong hurricane developing ~7+ days out,

1/
Dr. Levi Cowan on X
@TropicalTidbits

"The GFS commonly develops fictitious storms in the western Caribbean.

Typically, these arise from the aggregation of multiple small-scale vorticity perturbations (left panel) caused by and collocated with strong bursts of convection/precip (right panel).

While the GFS is not always wrong about the existence of these localized convective bursts, they are often way too strong, leading to small areas of intense vorticity/spin that eventually aggregate upscale into a tropical cyclone circulation, as we can see here on today's 12Z model run.

This is why the GFS is difficult to take seriously when it predicts TC formation, unless other models show a similar forecast. This is especially true in the western Caribbean, where the GFS has an extremely high false alarm rate.

Know your weather model before you trust its output!"

7:53 PM Jun 10, 2023
Reposted by Quinton Lawton, PhD
hankgreen.bsky.social
200+ scientists are in the middle of a marathon livestream to show why weather and climate science is so important and needs all our help to continue.

It is here: wclivestream.com/watch
Redirecting to: https://www.youtube.com/@wclivestream/live
wclivestream.com