Timothy Schneider

Tim Schneider joined the NSF NCAR Research Applications Laboratory (RAL) in 2019 in the capacity of Senior Program Manager and Business Developer.

Tim is motivated by the notion of "science serving society," and enjoys the teamwork required to do interdisciplinary, actionable science. One aspect of this is to "see with two eyes", collaboratively embracing western science and traditional ecological knowledge to better understand the Earth system and address the challenges of the day. This has manifested itself through work in the Rising Voices community and in contributions to the NSF Coastlines and People project "Rising Voices Changing Coasts Hub"

Since joining RAL Tim developed two large hydroclimate research initiatives. Building a multi-lab team of up to 40 people, he co-developed a long-term, collaborative, and interdisciplinary hydroclimate project with the USGS that produced the CONUS404 hydroclimate data set and the associated hydrologic response with WRF-Hydro. Tim also spearheaded an effort to successfully create a new international convergent science project under the auspices of the World Climate Research Program’s Global Energy and Water Exchanges Project (GEWEX) called Humans and Hydroclimate in the United States (H2US). In the late 1990s Tim worked in the Climate and Global Dynamics Lab at NSF-NCAR on the Community Earth System Model, and NCAR's contributions to the Third IPCC Assessment Report and subsequent analyses of the global energy and water cycles.

These two positions at NCAR bracketed twenty-two years with NOAA. Tim held positions in both the National Weather Service and NOAA Research, where he developed and led large interdisciplinary projects and programs that spanned water, weather, and climate disciplines. This work encompassed coupled modeling across scales, data assimilation, instrumentation and algorithm development, field studies, observations and analysis, and decision support systems. A few key activities that he found particularly interesting and impactful were leading the NOAA Hydrometeorology Testbed (HTM) Program, helping to establish the NWS National Water Center and the National Water Model, and leading the programs that led to the establishment of the NOAA Unified Forecast System.

Tim earned his MSc. in Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, and a BSc. in Applied Mathematics from the Colorado School of Mines.