
Contact Information
Research Areas
Biography
Prof. Nesbitt is the Associate Head and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where his research and teaching interests reside in observations and modeling of clouds and precipitation processes across the globe. He has participated in more than 20 field campaigns on 4 continents, and was the lead Principal Investigator of the NSF/NOAA/NASA RELAMPAGO (Remote sensing of Electrification, Lightning, And Mesoscale/microscale Processes with Adaptive Ground Observations) and Co-PI of the DOE Clouds, Aerosols, and Complex Terrain Interactions (CACTI) field campaign in Argentina and Brazil in 2018-19. He serves as a member of the American Meteorological Society Committee on Mesoscale Processes and the scientific planning team for the planned NASA Atmosphere Observing System mission. He is a faculty affiliate of the Computational Science and Engineering program and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies/Lemann Center. He is also the Chief Editor of the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology Atmospheres section, American Meteorological Society.
Research Interests
- precipitation processes and cloud dynamics
- mesoscale meteorology
- tropical meteorology
- radar and satellite meteorology
- data science in atmospheric sciences
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, Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies
External Links
Honors & Awards
- Highly Meritorious Meteorology Senior Award, State University of New York College at Oswego, 1997
- Excellence in Graduate Research Award, University of Utah, 2003
- NASA Earth System Science Graduate Fellowship, 2001 - 2003
- NASA New Investigator Award, 2008
- Editors’ Citation for Excellence in Refereeing for Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, American Geophysical Union, 2006, 2007, 2011
- NASA Robert H. Goddard Award, as member of the NASA Global Precipitation Measurement mission Ground Validation team, 2015
- NASA Group Achievement Award, 2010, 2015, 2020
- Award for Outstanding Service to the Radar Meteorology Committee, American Meteorological Society, 2016
- Department Graduate Teaching Award, 2020
- Department Service Award, 2020
- University of Utah Atmospheric Sciences Distinguished Alumnus Award, 2023
- List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent: ATMS 403 Spring 2007, Fall 2007, Fall 2009, ATMS 406 Fall 2009, ATMS 505 Spring 2013, ATMS 571 Fall 2014, ATMS 597 Spring 2020
Academic Service
- Member, Chair of the American Meteorological Society Scientific and Technical Committee on Radar Meteorology, 2008 - 2016
- Co-Chair, American Meteorological Society 35th Conference on Radar Meteorology, Pittsburgh, PA, 2011
- Editor, Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 2010 - 2014
- Member of the American Meteorological Society Scientific and Technical Committee on Mesoscale Meteorology, 2019 - present
- Member, Universities Space Research Association Earth Sciences Council, 2016 - present
- Co-Chair, American Meteorological Society 19th Conference on Mesoscale Meteorology, Houston, TX
- Chair, Department Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, 2020-2021, member 2021 - present
- Chief Editor, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, Atmosphere Section, 2010 - 2014
Recent Publications
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, [106456]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2022.106456
Bechis, H., Galligani, V., Alvarez Imaz, M., Cancelada, M., Simone, I., Piscitelli, F., Maldonado, P., Salio, P., & Nesbitt, S. W. (2022). A case study of a severe hailstorm in Mendoza, Argentina, during the RELAMPAGO-CACTI field campaign. Atmospheric Research, 271, [106127]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2022.106127
Chase, R. J., Nesbitt, S. W., McFarquhar, G. M., Wood, N. B., & Heymsfield, G. M. (2022). Direct Comparisons between GPM-DPR and CloudSat Snowfall Retrievals. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 61(9), 1257-1271. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-21-0081.1
Fu, D., Di Girolamo, L., Rauber, R. M., McFarquhar, G. M., Nesbitt, S. W., Loveridge, J., Hong, Y., Van Diedenhoven, B., Cairns, B., Alexandrov, M. D., Lawson, P., Woods, S., Tanelli, S., Schmidt, S., Hostetler, C., & Scarino, A. J. (2022). An evaluation of the liquid cloud droplet effective radius derived from MODIS, airborne remote sensing, and in situ measurements from CAMP2Ex. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 22(12), 8259-8285. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-8259-2022
Kollias, P., Palmer, R., Bodine, D., Adachi, T., Bluestein, H., Cho, J. Y. N., Griffin, C., Houser, J., Kirstetter, P. E., Kumjian, M. R., Kurdzo, J. M., Lee, W. C., Luke, E. P., Nesbitt, S., Oue, M., Shapiro, A., Rowe, A., Salazar, J., Tanamachi, R., ... Treserras, B. P. (2022). Science Applications of Phased Array Radars. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 103(10), E2370-E2390. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0173.1