Contact Information
1301 W Green St (M/C 104)
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Prof. Nesbitt is a Professor and Head of the Department of Climate, Meteorology, and Atmospheric Sciences (CliMAS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He leads a research group comprised of research staff, graduate students and undergraduate researchers in CliMAS, where his research and teaching interests reside in radar meteorology, satellite meteorology, tropical meteorology, mesoscale meteorology, and data science. His work has contributed to the understanding of processes involving deep convective systems and high-impact weather, measurements of and processes within global precipitation systems using satellites, processes in winter storms, and understanding precipitation systems in complex orography.
Prof. Nesbitt 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 co-author of the 2018 textbook Radar Meteorology, A First Course. He was named a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2024.
Research Interests
- Cloud and precipitation physics
- Mesoscale meteorology
- Radar meteorology
- Satellite meteorology
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