Kenneth E. Kunkel, Illinois State Water Survey

Ken Kunkel has held a variety of positions at the Illinois State Water Survey since 1988, including Director of the Midwestern Regional Climate Center and Director of the Office of Applied Climatology. Currently, as Head of the Atmospheric Environment Section, Ken manages a 25 professional staff performing research on climate variability and change, regional climate and air quality modeling, small-scale atmospheric phenomena, and atmospheric chemistry.

Ken holds a B.S. degree (1972) in physics from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and M.S. (1974) and Ph.D. (1978) degrees in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ken has performed research on atmospheric optical phenomena as a research meteorologist at the Atmospheric Sciences Laboratory at White Sands Missile Range. During 1982-1988, he served as the New Mexico State Climatologist and had a research and teaching appointment as an Associate Professor at New Mexico State University.

Ken has performed research on a wide range of atmospheric science issues. Recent research has focused on climate variability, extremes, and change. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals including Climatic Change, Journal of Climate, Journal of Applied Meteorology, Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, Remote Sensing of the Environment, and Agricultural and Forest Meteorology. In addition, Ken has written three book chapters and has published numerous articles in the proceedings of scientific conferences and symposia.