Contact Information
1301 W Green St (M/C 104)
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Prof. Nesbitt is the Head of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He leads a research group comprised of research staff, graduate students and undergraduate researchers in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences, where his research and teaching interests reside in radar meteorology, satellite meteorology, tropical meteorology, mesoscale meteorology, and data science. He has participated in over 20 field experiments; notably he was the lead Principal Investigator of the NSF/NOAA/NASA RELAMPAGO (Remote sensing of Electrification, Lightning, And Mesoscale/microscale Processes with Adaptive Ground Observations) field campaign, which observed convective storms in central Argentina alongside the DOE CACTI (Clouds, Aerosols, and Complex Terrain Interactions) field campaign, which he served as a Co-Lead Investigator. He is the Faculty PI of the National Science Foundation Flexible Arrays of Radars and Mesonets Community Instrument Facility, which includes the well-known Doppler on Wheels (DOW) radars. He is co-author of the 2018 textbook Radar Meteorology, A First Course.
He served as the co-chair of the 2011 AMS Conference on Radar Meteorology and the 2021 AMS Mesoscale Symposium, and served as Member (2008-2013) and Chair (2013-2016) of the AMS Radar Meteorology Scientific and Technical Activities Committee (STAC); from this service he received the AMS STAC Exceptional Service Award in 2017. He also currently serves on the AMS Mesoscale Processes STAC, and a focus area lead for the Global Energy and Water Exchanges (GEWEX) US Regional Hydroclimate Project. Prof. Nesbitt has received several other awards, including the NASA Earth System Science Graduate Fellowship from 2001-2003, the NASA New Investigator in Earth System Science Award in 2008, the NASA Group Achievement Award in 2012, 2015, and 2020, and the NASA Robert H. Goddard Award for exceptional achievement in 2014. He has also served on the NASA Earth Science Division Senior Review in 2020 and the review board for the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory in 2022. Prof. Nesbitt was Editor of the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology from 2010-2014 and serves as Chief Editor of the Atmosphere section of the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology beginning in 2023.
Education
Meteorology, PhD, University of Utah
Meteorology, MS, Texas A&M University
Meteorology, BS with Honors, State University of New York College at Oswego
Courses Taught
- ATMS 207: Weather and Climate Data Science
- ATMS 305: Geophysical Data Analysis
- ATMS 315: Meteorological Instrumentation
- ATMS 406: Tropical Meteorology
- ATMS 410: Radar Remote Sensing
- ATMS 523: Weather and Climate Data Analytics
- ATMS 597: Mesoscale Modeling
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Professor, Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies
Professor, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Head, Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
External Links
Recent Publications
Berman, M. T., Trapp, R. J., Nesbitt, S. W., & Di Girolamo, L. (2024). The Observed Impact of the Lower Stratospheric Thermodynamic Environment on Overshooting Top Characteristics During the RELAMPAGO-CACTI Field Campaign. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129(10), Article e2023JD040348. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JD040348
De Vera, M. V., Di Girolamo, L., Zhao, G., Rauber, R. M., Nesbitt, S. W., & Mcfarquhar, G. M. (2024). Observations of the macrophysical properties of cumulus cloud fields over the tropical western Pacific and their connection to meteorological variables. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 24(9), 5603-5623. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-5603-2024
King, F., Pettersen, C., Bliven, L. F., Cerrai, D., Chibisov, A., Cooper, S. J., L’Ecuyer, T., Kulie, M. S., Leskinen, M., Mateling, M., McMurdie, L., Moisseev, D., Nesbitt, S. W., Petersen, W. A., Rodriguez, P., Schirtzinger, C., Stuefer, M., von Lerber, A., Wingo, M. T., ... Wood, N. (2024). A Comprehensive Northern Hemisphere Particle Microphysics Data Set From the Precipitation Imaging Package. Earth and Space Science, 11(5), Article e2024EA003538. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EA003538
Chug, D., Dominguez, F., Taylor, C. M., Klein, C., & Nesbitt, S. W. (2023). Dry-to-Wet Soil Gradients Enhance Convection and Rainfall over Subtropical South America. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 24(9), 1563-1581. https://doi.org/10.1175/JHM-D-23-0031.1
Corrales, P. B., Galligani, V., Ruiz, J., Sapucci, L., Dillon, M. E., García Skabar, Y., Sacco, M., Schwartz, C. S., & Nesbitt, S. W. (2023). Hourly assimilation of different sources of observations including satellite radiances in a mesoscale convective system case during RELAMPAGO campaign. Atmospheric Research, 281, Article 106456. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2022.106456
