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by Joel Hoekstra

Katherine Klink
Photo by Leo Kim

Katherine Klink

Associate professor, geography

Education

B.S., University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee; M.S., Ph.D. University of Delaware

Weekend recreation

Museums, board games, reading, and playing Legos with her young son and daughter.

Talk about the weather…

“I think forecasters are right more often than they are wrong. The weather has an inescapable element of unpredictability. There's simply no way to predict the next day's high or low temperature (or rainfall or snowfall or wind speed) with absolute certainty. The atmosphere is ‘chaotic' in the mathematical sense of the word, meaning that atmospheric motions are semi-predictable but there are always uncertainties within the system. Chaos theory has some of its earliest roots in meteorology.”

Dream trip

“I'd go to the Arctic. I've been to Greenland and Iceland, but I'd like to visit the Canadian or Russian Arctic. I’m fascinated by the weather in Arctic regions, as well as by the ways in which humans, animals, and plants have adapted to these environments. I'd love to do a circumpolar hike.”

When you live off the land, you depend on the skies. Among the many lessons Katherine Klink learned as a child growing up on a farm in southeastern Wisconsin was this: The weather changes everything. And the weather changes often.

“My job was to pick rocks out of the field so they didn't get thrown up when the plow went by,” says Klink, now an associate professor of geography. "If it was raining, then we'd have to stay in the house and help Mom." Precipitation levels could also affect such essential activities as planting, plowing, and cutting hay. Strong winds could prevent the application of fertilizer.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Klink retained a strong interest in weather even after she left the farm for college and graduate school. Today she teaches courses in introductory meteorology, the geography of environmental systems, and climate models. "I try to make a point of relating everything we do to things that people have experienced or heard about: snowstorms, tornadoes, meteor showers, global warming,” Klink says.

In her "Introduction to Meteorology" course, Klink asks her students to track weather forecasts and the actual weather for 30 days. They measure cloud cover, wind direction, temperature highs and lows, and precipitation and compare it to historical data and weather in other regions. Additionally, Klink says, "When the forecast is blown, we go back and say, ‘What happened?'”

Klink encourages respect and empathy for hapless local weather forecasters. "Here in the Twin Cities, especially in the fall, we're often very close to the 32-degree Fahrenheit line. So depending on where the edge of the cold temperature line lies, we're either going to get rain or snow. Forecasting is very difficult.”

Klink's own research focuses on wind. Wind travels at different speeds at different heights. Winds sweeping across a prairie blow differently than those passing over treetops. And wind speeds naturally vary by region and by season. All these factors make it difficult to predict wind patterns from year to year, and over the course of several decades. "This problem has implications for wind power generators,” Klink notes.

If a company or individual wants to set up a wind turbine, location is very important. The turbine will be an economical investment only if it's erected in a spot where the surface winds are fairly constant and strong. But while meteorologists know that upper and mid-level winds are fairly predictable ("Up there, wind patterns are very smooth,” Klink says), their ability to forecast surface-level patterns is less precise.

“There's a relationship between these mid-level winds and what's going on at the surface. But there hasn't been a lot of work done on what those relationships are,” Klink says. "We know theoretically that there's a link. But we haven't really tested how we can evaluate spatial variability at the surface by looking at upper level winds." To that end, Klink has begun to analyze data on upper-, mid-, and surface-level winds collected from sites around the United States.

Shifting winds

Proponents of wind energy also face another impediment. Wind is a variable commodity. A turbine's output, unlike a coal plant, depends on nature's whims. "You can't really count on having it when you want it,” Klink points out. "But what if you spread turbines around in a wide range of places and connect them in a power grid? Then, if the wind is blowing in North Dakota today, but tomorrow it's stronger in Missouri, and yesterday it was windiest in Minnesota—well, then you create a network that almost always offers a reliable source of power.

“Even if you can't be sure that a particular turbine will produce a certain number of megawatts today, you can be reasonably assured that the collective network of turbines will produce a predictable level of power.”

Klink's statistical tools and models might not bring about a mad rush to harness wind on a grand scale anytime soon. But they will give scientists a better immediate understanding of how the world works, and how we can tap nature's powers. And that understanding could very well spur construction of wind farms down the road.

“Most weather and climate studies have focused on temperature and precipitation variability,” Klink says. "I hope that research on wind will help climatologists develop a broader understanding of how weather and climate change over time, regardless of whether that change is due to natural variability, or to human activities, or both.”