Contact Information

Department of Geography
University of the Fraser Valley
33844 King Rd.
Abbotsford, B.C.
V2S 7M8
Email: Lionel lionel.pandolfo@ufv.ca
Local phone 4462 Abbotsford
Office A406H Abbotsford

Biography

I grew up in Levis, across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City.  I have always been fascinated by the physical sciences, even at a young age, and since I had a talent for logical thinking and the mathematical formulation of physical problems, I pursued Bachelor's and Master's degrees in physics.  During my Master's I was introduced to the challenging world of climate science.  Climatology is a field replete with interesting questions that need answers.  Hence, I decided to conduct doctoral research in the fields of atmospheric dynamics and climatology.  I received my PhD from Yale University (CT, USA) in 1992 and after post-doctoral positions at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York became an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of British Columbia.  Since August 2010 I have been an adjunct faculty in the Department of Geography at the University of the Fraser Valley, devoting most of my time to climate research.


Research Interests

The aim of my research is to increase our scientific knowledge of climate variability and climate change that proceed through atmospheric processes.  On the global planetary scale, three issues attract my interest: a) what processes drive zonally-symmetric circulations (i.e. the Hadley and Ferrel cells) and the stationary jet stream; b) what representation of atmospheric variability best captures the climate change signal; and c) how do the troposphere and stratosphere interact.  On shorter spatial scales, in the realm of synoptic climatology, I am interested in how climate cycles influence synoptic weather variability (i.e. storm activity).  My research also has a regional component: understanding the differential rate of heating between cities and adjacent rural areas.

My research program represents a nested approach to investigating climate dynamics.  It covers many scales of motion, from the regional to the planetary, in order to provide an integrated view of climate variability.