Austin Harris

Postdoc Fellow II

Education, Engagement & Early Career Development

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Bio

Austin R. Harris is an ASP Postdoctoral Fellow with the Mesoscale & Microscale Meteorology Laboratory at NCAR in Boulder, CO.

Austin's research is multidisciplinary and centered around modeling. His primary area of work uses agent-based models to explore the impacts of hurricane forecasts on evacuation outcomes, such as evacuation decision-making and traffic. Dr. Harris also develops modeling techniques for improving predictions of extreme wind gusts. Related to this, he is a Community Scientist with the Thriving Earth Exchange where he collaborates with community and government organizations in Austin, TX to determine the ideal placement of particulate matter sensors to monitor health impacts of concrete batch plants on underserved communities. Unrelated to meteorology, Austin has also used neural networks to study the NBA home advantage phenomenon, including explaining why the home advantage has been decreasing over time.

Before working in research, Austin was an Instructor with the Warning Decision Training Division of the National Weather Service in Norman, OK. Before that, he worked as the Associate Director of Operations with Innovative Weather in Milwaukee, WI. He has also had the privilege of teaching many meteorology courses with the University of Oklahoma and Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Publications

8. Kahl, JD., Zaprzalka, KJ., Lang, VA., Selbig, BR., and Harris, AR. 2023: Investigating the potential of using mixdown altitudes to forecast peak wind gusts.

7. Harris, AR. , Morss, RE., and Roebber, PJ. 2023: What improves evacuations? Exploring the hurricane-forecast-evacuation system using an agent-based framework. Nat. Haz. Rev.

6. Harris, AR. , Roebber, PJ., and Morss, RE. 2023: A new verification approach? Using coupled-natural human models to explore the forecast-evacuation system. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0136.1

5. Lang, VA., Turner, TJ., Selbig, BR., Harris, AR., and Kahl, JD. 2022: Predicting peak wind gusts during specific weather types with the meteorologically stratified gust factor model. Wea. and Fcst. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/wefo/37/8/WAF-D-21-0201.1.xml

4. Harris, AR. , Roebber, PJ., and Morss, RE. 2021: An agent-based modeling framework for examining the dynamics of the hurricane-forecast-evacuation system. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102669

3. Kahl, JD., Selbig, BR., and Harris, AR. 2021: Meteorologically stratified gust factors for forecasting peak wind gusts across the United States. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0013.1

2. Harris, AR. and Roebber, PJ. 2019: NBA team home advantage: identifying key factors using an artificial neural network. PLOS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0220630

1. Harris, AR. and Kahl, J. 2017: Gust factors: meteorologically stratified climatology, data artifacts, and utility in forecasting peak gusts. J. Appl. Meteor. Climatol., 56, 3151–3166. https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-17-0133.1

Publications and Presentations (1)
Title	Source	Date
A new verification approach? Using coupled natural-human models to evaluate the impact of forecast errors on evacuations	Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society	2023-06-01

Curriculum Vitae

AHarrisResume_CV.pdf

Education

Degree	School Name	Country	Field of Study
BS	University of Oklahoma Norman Campus	United States of America	Meteorology
PhD	University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee	United States of America	Atmospheric Science/Meteorology
MS	University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee	United States of America	Atmospheric Science/Meteorology

Links

https://austinrharris.weebly.com/

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xXv-Za0AAAAJ&hl=en

https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-harris-318673247/

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