Katharine Kanak

Katharine M. Kanak is an American atmospheric scientist with noted publications on the dynamics and morphologies of atmospheric vortices, including tornadoes, tropical cyclones, misocyclones and landspouts, and dust devils both terrestrial and Martian.

Kanak earned a B.S. from the University of Oklahoma (OU) in 1987, majoring in meteorology and minoring in mathematics. She went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison for a M.S. in meteorology, earned in 1990 with the thesis Three-Dimensional, Non-Hydrostatic Numerical Simulation of a Developing Tropical Cyclone. She returned to OU and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1999 with the dissertation On the Formation of Vertical Vortices in the Atmosphere. Kanak is interested in turbulent boundary layer structures and eddies generally and is additionally interested in tornadogenesis and cloud physics. She has developed three-dimensional numerical models for both Earth and Mars and collaborated in field research. Kanak was assistant field coordinator for Project VORTEX in 1994-1995 and participated in STEPS in 2000 as well as VORTEX2 in 2009-2010.

Kanak people

Kanak (French spelling: Kanak since 1984; earlier Canaque) are the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants of New Caledonia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southwest Pacific. According to the 2009 census, they constitute 40.3% of the total population of New Caledonia with 99,078 people. Though Melanesian settlement is recorded on Grande Terre's Presqu'île de Foué peninsula as far back as the Lapita culture, the origin of Kanak people is unclear. Ethnographic research has shown that Polynesian seafarers have intermarried with the Kanaks over the centuries. The Kanaks refer to the European inhabitants of New Caledonia as Caldoches.

New Caledonia was annexed to France in 1853, and became an overseas territory of France in 1956. A political movement, restarted by some Kanaks in 1984, after an initial failed revolt in 1967, has strongly pursued total independence status from the French rule. A 2014 referendum will decide whether or not the territory will achieve sovereign status. When the 1988 Matignon agreements were signed between the representatives of France and New Caledonia to decide on holding the referendum for independence, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, the Kanak leader of the independence movement, had mooted a proposal to set up an Agency for the Development of Kanak Culture (ADCK). After Tjibaou's assassination in 1989, the French President François Mitterrand ordered that a cultural centre on the lines suggested by Tjibaou be set up in Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia; it was to be the last of Mitterrand's Grands Projets. The Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre was formally established in May 1998.

Kanak (disambiguation)

Kanak or similar may mean:

See also