Kátia Fernandes

Kátia Fernandes
Senior Research Scholar
137 Research III Building, Centennial Campus
Box 7236, North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-7236

Email: kdeavil@ncsu.edu

Kátia Fernandes joined the State Climate Office in January 2024. She is a climate scientist, whose work focuses on applied climate research to the benefit of society. She developed the first fire seasonal forecast model for the western Amazon, which provides decision-makers with an outlook of fire season anomalies as a response to predicted climate. Her work also includes studies of the combined effect of vegetation health, temperature and precipitation on fire predictability at various time scales. She has also applied her research to better understand how the climate impacts agricultural production, the predominance of infectious diseases, and ecosystems services of tropical forests.

Kátia’s career includes 10 years as an Associate Research Scientist at the Columbia University International Research Institute for Climate and Society and 4 years as an Assistant Professor of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas, where she had the privilege of teaching courses on environmental sustainability, climate science and global change.

She has a PhD in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Master’s in Meteorology from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and a Bachelor’s in Meteorology from the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil.