Maj Peter A. Saunders, PhD

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Major Peter Saunders has served in the United States Air Force since 2011. His first assignment was at Barksdale AFB at the 26 Operational Weather Squadron from April 2011 through March 2013, where he worked as a forecaster, Staff Duty Officer (SDO), and flight commander in one of the weather “hubs” that service both Air Force and Army airfields and test ranges across the southeastern United States. After his time in Louisiana, he went to Kunsan AB at the 8 Fighter Wing where he worked as the Wing Weather Officer and 8 Operations Group executive officer from March 2013 through March 2014. After his short tour in Korea, Maj Saunders was assigned to Hill AFB in Utah to serve as the Weather Flight Commander within the 75 Air Base Wing from April 2014 through August 2016. During his time at Hill AFB, he was granted a PhD student slot through the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) Civilian Institution (CI) program, and in August 2016 he began his academic tour at the University of Utah to pursue a doctoral degree in Atmospheric Science. His primary research focus was in data assimilation and cloud initiation of tropical cyclones and tropical cyclone (TC) rain bands. Maj Saunders completed his degree in August 2019, and has been an Assistant Professor at AFIT since November 2019. His current research includes furthering the goals of AFIT Sensor and Scene Emulation Tool (ASSET) to include cloud and lightning climatological data in an effort to create realistic scenes of these phenomena in "real time." His research also includes data assimilation of radio occultation (RO) observations for use in high-resolution model wind forecasts for Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC).

Education

Ph.D., Atmospheric Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 2020

M.S., Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 2010

B.S., Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, 2007

Awards

Military:

  • GSEM CGO of the Year, 2020

  • Air Force Commendation Medal, 2016

  • AFMC Company Grade Officer of the Year, 2015

  • Air Force Commendation Medal, 2014

  • Air Force Commendation Medal, 2013

  • 26 OWS Sijan Award, 2012

  • Weather Officer School Distinguished Graduate, 2011

Publications

[1] Saunders, Peter, Yafan Yu, and Zhaoxia Pu. "Sensitivity of Numerical Simulations of Hurricane Joaquin (2015) to Cumulus Parameterization Schemes: Implications for Processes Controlling a Hairpin Turn in the Track", Journal of the Meteorological Society of Japan. Ser. II, 2019

Conference Presentations:

[1] Saunders, P., & Powers, S., Using a VARMA approach to Obtain Synthetic Observations of Lightning. Oral presentation given at the 102nd annual American Meteorological Society Conference, Houston, TX, 2022

[2] Castro, B., & Saunders, P., Applications of a Lightning Proxy to Generate Synthetic Lightning for use in Physics-Based Image-Chain Models, Oral presentation given at the 102nd annual American Meteorological Society Conference, Houston, TX, 2022

[3] Powers, S., & Saunders, P., Synthetic Lightning Generation Employing Auto-Regressive Moving Average (ARMA) models, Poster presentation given at the annual American Geophysical Union Conference, New Orleans, LA, 2021

[4]  Saunders, P.A., & Pu, Z., Studying the sudden onset and evolution of outer rainband precipitation of Hurricane Harvey (2017) using Numerical simulations with data assimilation and cloud initiation, Poster presentation given at the 100th annual American Meteorological Society Conference, Boston, MA, 2020

[5] Saunders, P.A., & Pu, Z., Numerical Simulations of Hurricane Harvey with data assimilation and cloud initiation, Poster presentation given at the 99th annual American Meteorological Society Conference, Phoenix, AZ, 2019

[6] Saunders, P.A., & Pu, Z., Sensitivity of Numerical Simulations of Hurricane Harvey to Cloud Microphysical Schemes, Data Assimilation, and Cloud Initiation, American Meteorological Society (AMS) Tropical Conference, Ponte Vedra, FL, 2018

[7] Saunders, P.A., & Pu, Z., Numerical Simulations of a Convective Outbreak with Conventional Observations and Radar Data Simulation Using GSI, Poster presentation given at the 98th annual American Meteorological Society Conference, Austin, TX, 2018

[8] Saunders, P. A., & Fuelberg, H. E., Development and evaluation of mesoscale lightning threat guidance for operational use at NWS forecast offices, Verbal presentation given at the 90th annual American Meteorological Society Conference, Atlanta, GA, 2010

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