Kelly Mahoney

Dr. Kelly Mahoney is CIRES Research Scientist in the Physical Sciences Division at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory. She studies flood events and extreme rainfall and works with forecasters and decision-making groups to achieve research outcomes that meet stakeholder needs. Kelly focuses on extreme precipitation process understanding and forecast improvement on weather timescales as part of the NOAA Hydrometeorology Testbed. Kelly also works on projects focusing on climate timescales, using high-resolution WRF model simulations to study extreme rainfall events of interest to water resources decision-making groups in the context of a changing climate. Kelly graduated in 2009 from North Carolina State University where she earned a B.S., M.S. and PhD in Atmospheric Science. Her graduate research focused on topics such as quantitative precipitation forecasting and numerical forecast model representation of severe thunderstorms. She later focused on model representation of convective momentum transport, with a larger goal of improving numerical forecasts of organized, warm-season convective systems and the prediction of damaging surface winds. Most recently, Kelly has been working on coupled hydrometeorological modeling with a goal of better connecting the atmospheric and hydrologic aspects of flash flood forecasting and process understanding.