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Professor Earth and Atmospheric Sciences ahouston2@unl.edu 305 Bessey Hall

Web page for Dr. Houston’s Severe Storms Research Group.

Dr. Adam Houston joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences in 2006. Prior to this he served as a visiting instructor at UNL in the 2005-2006 academic year and served as both a visiting assistant professor and postdoctoral research assistant in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University in the 2004-2005 academic year. Dr. Houston received his Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his B.S. in meteorology from Texas A&M University.

Dr. Houston's research focus is on cloud-scale and mesoscale phenomena; specifically, those related to severe local storms. Active research projects deal specifically with deep convective initiation, the impacts of preexisting airmass boundaries on supercell rotation, climatologies of supercells and non-supercells, high-precipitation supercells, environmental controls on storm mode, and computational fluid dynamics.

Numerical experiments conducted by Dr. Houston and his research group (SSRG) utilize cloud-scale and mesoscale numerical models. Observational work primarily utilizes unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and Doppler radars.

Selected Publications

Islam, A., A. Houston, A. Shankar, C. Detweiler, 2019: Design and Evaluation of Sensor Housing for Boundary Layer Profiling using Multirotors. Sensors, 19, 2481, doi: 10.3390/s19112481

Jacob, J., P. Chilson, A. L. Houston, and S. Smith, 2018: Considerations for Atmospheric Measurements with Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems as part of the CLOUD-MAP Flight Campaign. Atmosphere, 9, 252, doi: 10.3390/atmos9070252 

Houston, A.L., and J.M. Keeler‡, 2018: The Impact of Sensor Response and Airspeed on the Representation of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Phenomena by Airborne Instruments. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 35, 1687–1699, doi: 10.1175/JTECH-D-18-0019.1 

Hanft, W. † and A. L. Houston, 2018: An observational and modeling study of mesoscale air masses with high theta-e. Monthly Weather Review, 146, 2503-2524. doi: 10.1175/MWR-D-17-0389.1. 

Limpert, G. ‡ and A. L. Houston., 2018: Ensemble Sensitivity Analysis for Targeted Observations of Supercell Thunderstorms. Monthly Weather Review, 146, 1705-1721. doi: 10.1175/MWR-D-17-0029.1. 

Ford, T, S. Quiring, B. Thakur, R. Jogineedi, A. Houston, S. Yuan, A. Kalra, N. Lock †: 2018: Evaluating Soil Moisture-Precipitation Interactions Using Remote Sensing: A Sensitivity Analysis.  Journal of Hydrometeorology, 19, 1237-1253. doi: 10.1175/JHM-D-17-0243.1. 

Nasta, P., Z. Adane, N. Lock†, A. Houston, and J. Gates, 2018: Links between episodic groundwater recharge rates and rainfall events classified according to stratiform-convective storm scoring: a plot-scale study in eastern Nebraska. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 259, 154-161. doi: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2018.05.003. 

Education

Ph.D., 2004, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign

Expertise Areas

Atmospheric convection, severe weather, mesoscale processes, climate diagnostics