My major research area is in physical meteorology and climatology, specifically the fluxes of energy and mass between the surface and the atmospheric boundary layer. Much of my research has focused on radiative fluxes between vegetated surfaces and the atmosphere, but I have also conducted modeling and field studies investigating energy exchanges over the Greenland ice sheet and their impact on the amount and extent of surface melting. I am currently involved in several research projects concerning land surface-atmosphere interactions in the Nebraska Sand Hills. One of these is investigating how the Sand Hills' unique soil properties affect generation of warm-season mesoscale precipitation over the Sand Hills and surrounding plains. Our findings show that the Sand Hills have a complex set of effects on the atmosphere — in some cases acting to inhibit convective precipitation while in others acting to enhance convection and precipitation generation in the region. These investigations were part of a large, multi-investigator NSF grant to study the Sand Hills as a complex ecosystem. This team of researchers included ecologists, physicists, geologists, hydrologists and meteorologists.

I am also working with Dave Loope and Bob Oglesby to model the climate of Pangea during the Jurassic. We are using the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate Simulation Model (CCSM) to simulate the climate of 200 million years ago as part of our research into the environment that led to development of vast eolian formations in what is now the southwestern United States.

I teach courses in physical meteorology as well as graduate seminars in boundary-layer meteorology, climatic change and other topics in meteorology and climatology. In addition, I supervise all Meteorology/Climatology internships.