Assistant in Research
Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies
RF1 254
(850) 645-2224 phone
Dr. Heather Holbach is a member of the research faculty at COAPS and a Northern Gulf Institute cooperative institute employee with NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) Hurricane Research Division (HRD) in Miami, FL. She serves as HRD’s expert on the Stepped-Frequency Microwave Radiometer (SFMR), which is flown on the NOAA P-3 and Air Force C-130 hurricane hunter aircraft. Her research focuses on refining wind speed estimates retrieved by the SFMR through improving the understanding of air-sea interactions in high-wind conditions. She participates in hurricane hunter flights to collect data for her research and has over 50 hurricane eyewall penetrations in 8 different hurricanes.
Dr. Holbach began working with the SFMR while obtaining her Ph.D. in meteorology from Florida State University in 2016 under the advisement of Prof. Mark Bourassa. She obtained B.S. and M.S. degrees in meteorology from FSU in 2010 and 2012, respectively. Dr. Holbach began working at COAPS in 2010 while pursuing her M.S. degree under Prof. Mark Bourassa. Her master’s work involved using scatterometers to identify gap wind jets in central America and how they contributed to the genesis of tropical cyclones in the eastern north Pacific basin.
Her research interests are air-sea interaction, remote sensing, and tropical cyclones. She is currently serving on the AMS committee on Air-Sea Interaction.
