Timothy Logan

About

Timothy Logan is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences and serves as the Director of the Houston Lightning Mapping Array (HLMA) Network. His research focuses on lightning behavior, cloud top discharges, and the charge structure of thunderstorms, employing advanced lightning mapping technologies to analyze phenomena such as jets, gigantic jets, and transient luminous events. His work includes collaborative NSF-funded projects that examine the impacts of aerosols, including wildfire smoke and pollution, on lightning activity and severe weather, utilizing observational data and modeling approaches. Logan's research aims to understand the microphysical and radiative effects of aerosols on deep convection, with a particular emphasis on the Houston metropolitan area and the Gulf Coast region. He also integrates machine learning techniques to analyze convective systems and develop storm intensity prediction models, with future plans to expand the coverage of the HLMA network to study marine and tropical convection impacts.

Research topics

• Physics
• Atmospheric sciences
• Meteorology
• Environmental science
• Climatology
• Geology
• Geography
• Astrophysics

Selected publications

• Impacts of long-range transport of aerosols on marine-boundary-layer clouds in the eastern North Atlantic

  Atmospheric chemistry and physics · 2020 · 82 citations

  Abstract. Vertical profiles of aerosols are inadequately observed and poorly represented in climate models, contributing to the current large uncertainty associated with aerosol–cloud interactions. The US Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Aerosol and Cloud Experiments in the Eastern North Atlantic (ACE-ENA) aircraft field campaign near the Azores islands provided ample observations of vertical distributions of aerosol and cloud properties. Here we utilize the in…

  DOI

• Environmental effects on aerosol–cloud interaction in non-precipitating marine boundary layer (MBL) clouds over the eastern North Atlantic

  Atmospheric chemistry and physics · 2022 · 48 citations

  Abstract. Over the eastern North Atlantic (ENA) ocean, a total of 20 non-precipitating single-layer marine boundary layer (MBL) stratus and stratocumulus cloud cases are selected to investigate the impacts of the environmental variables on the aerosol–cloud interaction (ACIr) using the ground-based measurements from the Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) facility at the ENA site during 2016–2018. The ACIr represents the relative change in cloud droplet effective radius…

  PublisherDOI

• Investigation of aerosol–cloud interactions under different absorptive aerosol regimes using Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) southern Great Plains (SGP) ground-based measurements

  Atmospheric chemistry and physics · 2020 · 41 citations

  Abstract. The aerosol indirect effect on cloud microphysical and radiative properties is one of the largest uncertainties in climate simulations. In order to investigate the aerosol–cloud interactions, a total of 16 low-level stratus cloud cases under daytime coupled boundary-layer conditions are selected over the southern Great Plains (SGP) region of the United States. The physicochemical properties of aerosols and their impacts on cloud microphysical properties are examined using data collecte…

  DOI

• Experiment of Sea Breeze Convection, Aerosols, Precipitation, and Environment (ESCAPE)

  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · 2024-05-17 · 16 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Convective clouds play an important role in Earth’s climate system and are a known source of extreme weather. Gaps in our understanding of convective vertical motions, microphysics, and precipitation across a full range of aerosol and meteorological regimes continue to limit our ability to predict the occurrence and intensity of these cloud systems. To improve predictability, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored a large field experiment entitled “Experiment of Sea Breeze Conv…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• New WMO Certified Megaflash Lightning Extremes for Flash Distance and Duration Recorded from Space

  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · 2022-01-25 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access

  Initial global extremes in lightning duration and horizontal distance were established in 2017 by an international panel of atmospheric lightning scientists and engineers assembled by the WMO. The subsequent launch of NOAA’s latest GOES-16/17 satellites with their Geostationary Lightning Mappers (GLMs) enabled extreme lightning to be monitored continuously over the western hemisphere up to 55⁰ latitude for the first time. Consequently, the former lightning extremes were more than doubled in 2019…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Evaluating the Influences of Aerosols on Low-level Cloud-precipitation Properties over Land and Ocean using Ground-based Observations and WRF Simulations

  NSF · $85k · 2017–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Yuan Wang

  Stanford University

  27 shared

• Xiquan Dong

  27 shared

• Baike Xi

  University of Arizona

  26 shared

• Xiaojian Zheng

  University of Arizona

  16 shared

• Brendan Lawrence

  Mitchell Institute

  13 shared

• Jacob Hale

  Mitchell Institute

  13 shared

• Sydney Butler

  Mitchell Institute

  13 shared

• Yuk L. Yung

  California Institute of Technology

  11 shared

Labs

• Atmospheric Sciences Research LabPI

Awards & honors

• 2015: TAMU Atmospheric Science Department Outstanding Facult…
• 2015: Hubei Province, China Scientific Paper Award
• 2014: American Meteorological Society Best Student Poster Aw…
• 2011: National Science Foundation East Asian and Pacific Sum…

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