National Lightning Safety Council

Kristin Calhoun
Dr. Kristin Calhoun

Meteorologist
Lightning Physics and Safety Specialist
National Lightning Safety Council
Kristin.Calhoun@noaa.gov


Dr. Kristin Calhoun is a research scientist at the NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory. She has a PhD from the School of Meteorology at the University of Oklahoma focusing on the evolution of the electrical charge structure and lightning relative to meteorological features of severe thunderstorms.

Her current work focuses on the transition of lightning research and algorithms to National Weather Service operations. Dr. Calhoun has been the principal investigator on numerous projects within the NOAA Hazardous Weather Testbed including the development and testing of multiple lightning-integrated and data assimilation algorithms such as the lightning jump detection algorithm, the evaluation of Earth Networks’ dangerous thunderstorm alerts and high-resolution 3DVAR analyses, Multi-Radar Multi-Sensor development, and most recently, storm-based probabilistic cloud-to-ground lightning guidance and forecasts integrating machine learning.

Dr. Calhoun also serves the on the science team for the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), a new instrument on the GOES series R and S satellites, where she helps guide the operational implementation and use of the lightning data from the satellite for severe weather forecasting and lightning-related products and forecasts.

WHEN THUNDER ROARS, GO INDOORS!