Palou Salamanca, Francisco
Francisco Salamanca Palou
Assistant Professor | College of Engineering and Science - Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences
Assistant Professor of Meteorology
Contact Information
Edwin A. Link BLDG, 312
Personal Overview
Dr. Salamanca is an Assistant Professor of Meteorology in the Department of Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences at Florida Tech. His research interests include studying ocean-land-atmosphere interactions; investigating planetary boundary-layer dynamics; modeling impacts of urban expansion and global warming on cooling/heating energy demand and thermal comfort; developing mitigation and adaptation strategies to reduce heat stress in urban areas; and, recently, characterizing moisture-source contributions to total precipitation. Francisco’s research uses in-situ observations, satellite remote sensing data, coding development for data analysis, and massive computational resources to perform numerical weather-prediction simulations.
Educational Background
PhD, Physics (Atmospheric Sciences), Complutense University of Madrid (Spain)
MS, Fundamental Physics, Complutense University of Madrid (Spain)
BS, Fundamental Physics, University of the Balearic Islands (Spain)
Professional Experience
Before joining Florida Tech, Francisco was a postdoctoral scientist, first at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and later at Arizona State University, where he was promoted to Assistant Research Professor. In addition to publishing many papers on the broad field of atmospheric sciences, Francisco developed and implemented a multilayer building-energy model in the internationally used Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model to better characterize urban surface-atmosphere interaction; the model has been available for use by the scientific community since 2010.
Current Courses
ENS 3101 Atmospheric Environments
ENS 5101 Introduction to Air Pollution
Selected Publications
Salamanca-Palou F., B. Svoma, J. Walter, D. Insua-Costa, G. Miguez-Macho, J. Karanja, and M. Georgescu (2024), Modeling Salt-Verde Watershed Winter Precipitation Using Convection-Permitting WRF-simulations With Water Vapor Tracers, JGR Atmospheres, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JD041029
Salamanca-Palou F., and A. Mahalov (2019), Summer- and Wintertime Variations of the Surface and Near-surface Urban Heat Island in a Semiarid Environment, Weather and Forecasting, https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-19-0054.1
Salamanca F., Y. Zhang, M. Barlage, F. Chen, A. Mahalov, and S. Miao (2018), Evaluation of the WRF-Urban Modeling System Coupled to Noah and Noah-MP Land Surface Models over a Semiarid Urban Environment, JGR Atmospheres, https://doi.org/10.1002/2018JD028377
Salamanca F., M. Georgescu, A. Mahalov, M. Moustaoui, and M. Wang (2014), Anthropogenic heating of the urban environment due to air-conditioning, JGR Atmospheres, https://doi.org/10.1002/2013JD021225
Salamanca F., A. Martilli, M. Tewari, and F. Chen (2011), A Study of the Urban Planetary Boundary Layer Using Different Urban Parameterizations and High-Resolution Urban Canopy Parameters with WRF, JAMC, https://doi.org/10.1175/2010JAMC2538.1
Salamanca F., A. Krpo, A. Martilli, and A. Clappier (2010), A new building energy model coupled with an urban canopy parameterization for urban climate simulations-part I. formulation, verification, and sensitivity analysis of the model, Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 99, 331-344.