Congratulations to WRRC/CEE faculty member Sayed Bateni! He received the prestigious and distinguished Fulbright award to Qatar. More than 900 U.S. college and university faculty and administrators are awarded Fulbright awards annually.
This award will be applied to his research: Modeling Heat Waves in Qatar by Merging Remotely Sensed and in-situ Hydrologic Data within Machine Learning Approaches. Qatar is one of the fastest warming areas of the world. Over the past three decades, the air temperature increase in Qatar has accelerated. This air temperature rise is partly due to the rapidly warming shallow sea water in the North of Qatar. The high humidity from the sea water in the north prevents evaporation, making the air warming problem even worse, ultimately causing environmental and weather-related fatalities in Qatar. Heat waves also have negative economic impacts such as damaging agricultural products, depletion of water resources, etc. It is evident that the heat waves in Qatar have a significant impact on its health issues, energy consumption, agriculture, tourism, and economy. This study predicts heat waves duration and intensity in Qatar by merging remotely sensed land surface temperature (LST) and meteorological data within machine learning approaches.