Joel Lisonbee

I have expertise in tropical and high-latitude weather and climate variability. I have a PhD from the Center for Applied Climate Sciences at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. Prior to that I earned a BS in Meteorology and a MS in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Before that I graduated from Salt Lake Community College—I'm pretty proud to have gone from community college to PhD.

Work experience includes 10 years with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, first in Darwin then in Canberra. Since 2020 I have worked at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado-Boulder (https://cires.colorado.edu/). As a senior associate scientist at CIRES, my duties are to support NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS; drought.gov) and the Southern Plains Drought Early Warning System. Over the past six years I have led research in flash drought, drought assessment in a changing climate, drought and groundwater issues, and regional drought assessments.