Jeffrey C. Rogers

    Research Interests

    The main theme of Jeff's research is the relationship between atmospheric circulation and regional climate variability, especially short-term climatic fluctuations.  Much of the regional focus of his work is in the North Atlantic Ocean, stemming from work and a series of well-known papers with Harry van Loon in the late 1970s on the seesaw in winter air temperatures between Greenland and northern Europe.  A 1984 Monthly Weather Review paper was the first to use a simple widely used two-station index of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) which has subsequently been updated to 2000.  Recent work focuses not only on the NAO but also the Pacific/North American (PNA) teleconnection pattern which has notable climatic impacts on North America.  These include significant winter associations with (i) air temperature in the Yukon and adjacent areas, (ii) air temperature over the southeastern United States, (iii) Ohio River Valley precipitation, (iv) synoptic-scale polar outbreaks that can lead to economic impacts such as citrus freezes in Florida.

     The focus of Jeff's current work includes the following.

    • Examining the relationship between the NAO and the relatively new high latitude Arctic Oscillation.
    • Examining how seasonal synoptic cyclone variability differs between the NAO and Arctic Oscillation
    • Examining how North Atlantic decadal-scale sea surface temperature changes are links to climatic fluctuations around the northern Atlantic.
    • Examining how the PNA is linked to the Ohio River Valley winter hydrology.
    • Examining how the PNA is linked to North American streamflow.
    • Examining how the PNA climatic signal in North America differs from that of    ENSO.

    Jeff has been the State Climatologist for Ohio since 1986.  He has additionally served on the Governor's State Drought Assessment Committee, an advisory committee that was recently active in 1999.  Teaching responsibilities primarily include the synoptic meteorology course sequence in Geography (Geography 620, 623.01 and 623.02).  Jeff became the Graduate Studies Committee chair in both the Geography Department and the Atmospheric Sciences Program in 1995-1996.  He is a member of the Association of American Geographers, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the Ohio Academy of Science, and the Byrd Polar Research Institute at OSU.  Jeff is married and he and his wife Ellen have two sons.  Jeff's primary hobby is amateur astronomy and he has observed over 1700 New General Catalogue (NGC) objects with his 12.5 inch Newtonian reflector from remote sites in northern and eastern Ohio.

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