Dr. Howard (Howie “Cb”) B. Bluestein, a native of Boston, MA, is a George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Meteorology at the School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma (OU), Norman. He earned an S.B. and S. M. in electrical engineering in 1971 and 1972 and an S. M. and Ph. D. in meteorology in 1972 and 1976 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has been a professor at OU since 1976; he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in synoptic meteorology and graduate courses in mesoscale meteorology and in convection. In 2004 he received the Teaching Excellence Award from the AMS. From 2000 – 2004 he was a Samuel Roberts Noble Presidential Professor. He has also been a longterm scientific visitor in the Mesoscale Microscale Meteorology Division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO, an instructor at COMET (Cooperative Program for Operational Meteorology, Education, and Training) in Boulder, CO, a scientific visitor at the Hurricane Research Division of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in Miami, FL, and the Houghton Lecturer at MIT.

Bluestein’s research interests include synoptic and mesoscale meteorology, severe convective storms and tornadoes, and tropical cyclones. Having participated in severe-storm intercept projects since 1977, he most recently has been using mobile W- and X-band Doppler radars to study tornadoes and severe storms. He is the author of Synoptic-Dynamic Meteorology in Midlatitudes, Vols. I and II (Oxford Univ. Press, 1992 and 1993) and of Tornado Alley (Oxford Univ. Press, 1999), for which he received the AMS 2001 Louis J. Battan’s Author’s award. He is currently working on a book on clouds for Yale Univ. Press. He is also the author or coauthor of 88 refereed journal publications and 15 refereed book chapters. His photographs, which have been published worldwide, have been reproduced on the cover of Time magazine and in publications such as Scientific American, Le Figaro Magazine, Geo (Germany and France), Focus (Italy), and Weatherwise. He has appeared on television on NOVA, special programs on the BBC, Discovery Channel, the Weather Channel, the History Channel, and the Learning Channel, and in the IMAX movie Stormchasers.

He is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), and has served as chair of UCAR’s (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research) Scientific Programs Evaluation Committee, the National Science Foundation Observing Facilities Advising Panel (OFAP), and the AMS Committee on Severe Local Storms. He has also served on the National Research Council (NRC) Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate (BASC) and on the NRC Committee on Weather Radar Technology Beyond NEXRAD (Next Generation Radar), and as an associate editor of the AMS peer-reviewed scientific journal Monthly Weather Review. He currently is the chair of OFAP for a second term, serves on the AMS Committee on Radar Meteorology and on the NAS/NRC Committee on Strategic Guidance for NSF’s Support of the Atmospheric Sciences. He is also one of two co-editors of the Sanders Symposium Monograph to be published by the AMS.

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University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology

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