Dr. Owen Shieh

Visiting Professor

owen.shieh [at] westpoint.edu

Dr. Owen Shieh is a Visiting Scientist at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He is supported by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy, and Environment as the first Research Fellow assigned to the newly established Sustainable Infrastructure, Resilience, and Climate Consortium. A meteorologist with over 20 years of experience across the public, private, and academic sectors, Dr. Shieh specializes in the national security impacts of weather prediction and operational decision support. He has provided support to the White House Presidential Weather Operations and technical meteorological training to over 2,000 forward-deployed U.S. military personnel. He has served on U.S. delegations to the United Nations World Meteorological Organization’s Typhoon Committee and led bilateral technical discussions with the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau, Japan Meteorological Agency, Japan Self-Defense Forces, and the Republic of Korea Air Force. Dr. Shieh also provides technical training in tactical tropical climatology and limited-data weather forecasting to U.S. Special Operations Forces, including the Navy SEALs and the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) “Night Stalkers.”

Prior to joining the faculty at West Point as a Visiting Scientist, Dr. Shieh served as a Mission Operations Engineer at Anduril Industries, where he facilitated the on-site integration of the Lattice Joint Operating Software into operational contingency planning at U.S. Pacific Fleet Headquarters and advised the integration of environmental data into AI-infused autonomous technologies. From 2016 to 2024, Dr. Shieh served as the civilian Training & Readiness Department Head at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) in Pearl Harbor, where he was responsible for the 24/7 operational training of all U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps personnel who provided tropical cyclone forecasting and tsunami decision support to U.S. Government assets across the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s area of responsibility, encompassing nearly 100 million square miles of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Prior to JTWC, Dr. Shieh served as the Weather & Climate Program Manager at the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center, where he established and led a national team of experts and instructors to develop and deliver hazardous weather and climate FEMA certified training courses for state and local emergency managers and responders across the United States.

Dr. Shieh presently serves in the U.S. Navy Reserve as a Direct Commission Meteorology and Oceanography Officer assigned to the Pacific Fleet Submarine Forces Intelligence unit in Pearl Harbor. In 2017, he was named "Oceanographer of the Year" and awarded the U.S. Navy Civilian Meritorious Service Medal. He holds a B.S. in Atmospheric Science from Cornell University, an M.S. in Meteorology from the University of Oklahoma, and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Hawaii.

B.S. in Atmospheric Science - Cornell University

M.S. in Meteorology - University of Oklahoma

Ph.D. in Political Science - University of Hawaii

Research Interests

Hazardous Weather Prediction, Extreme Weather and National Security, Natural Hazards Decision Support

Current Research

Cross-Functional Weather Decision Support as a National Security Imperative, Characterizing the Evolving Risks of Tornadoes in the United States, Hurricane Impact Indices

Selected Publications

Shieh, Owen H., and Stephen J. Colucci. "Local Minimum of Tropical Cyclogenesis in the Eastern Caribbean." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 91, no. 2 (February 1, 2010): 185–96. https://doi.org/10.1175/2009BAMS2822.1.

Shieh, Owen H., Michael Fiorino, Matthew E. Kucas, and Bin Wang. "Extreme Rapid Intensification of Typhoon Vicente (2012) in the South China Sea." Weather and Forecasting 28, no. 6 (September 11, 2013): 1578–87. https://doi.org/10.1175/WAF-D-13-00076.1.

Goldner, Aaron, Jennifer Henderson, and Owen Shieh. "Science Policy: Using Your Voice to Inform and Inspire." Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 94 (February 19, 2013), 80–81. https://doi.org/10.1002/2013EO080009.

Clabo, Darren, and Owen H. Shieh. "Forecasting Thunderstorm Outflow Boundaries: Impacts and Implications for Wildland Firefighting." Poster, 26th Conference on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, Atlanta, GA, American Meteorological Society, February 3, 2014. https://ams.confex.com/ams/94Annual/webprogram/Paper232281.html.

Choy, Barry, Owen Shieh, and Imes Chiu. "El Niño Impacts on Regional Security." White Paper. United States Pacific Command, July 9, 2014.