Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

Mike Hobbins

Senior Research Scientist for NOAA-Physical Sciences Laboratory

Headshot of Mike Hobbins
Education
  • University of Leeds, UK (B.Eng. - Civil Engineering)
  • Colorado State University (M.S. - Hydrologic Science and Engineering)
  • Colorado State University (Ph.D. - Hydrologic Science and Engineering)
Email
mike.hobbins@colorado.edu
Phone
307-228-0815

Research Interests

  • Evapotranspiration and evaporative demand
  • Drought monitoring and early warning
  • Secular and climate-scale hydrologic trends
  • Land surface-atmosphere interactions
  • Drivers of hydrologic spatio-temporal variability

Current Research

My goal is to advance drought and famine early warning by improved estimation and innovative exploitation of atmospheric evaporative demand. This entails fundamental research into land surface/atmosphere hydrology and outreach to stakeholders in the drought-monitoring and scientific communities. I generate reference evapotranspiration reanalyes for NOAA's stakeholders across the continental US and for FEWS NET's science communities in food-insecure countries, and I convert these reanalyses into a drought index--the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI)--that offers early warning and ongoing monitoring of agricultural and hydrologic drought.

Research Categories

Atmosphere, Climate and Weather, Water Resources

Research Images

Graph of drought monitor

Drought Monitor

2-week EDDI (right) indicates drought emerging, spreading, and intensifying across the Midwest during the "flash drought" event of 2012 many weeks ahead of the US Drought Monitor (left)

Honors and Awards

1999: Best M.S. Student Paper Award at 19th Annual AGU Hydrology Days conference
2001: H. W. Shen Water Resources Graduate Award, Colorado State University
2002: NSF Computer Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Scholarship
2008: Gary Comer Abrupt Climate Change Fellowship
2017: American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) Superior Paper Award
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