Christopher Davis

Prior to arriving at UMass Amherst, he was a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), a role he held since 1990. He has served as director of NCAR’s Advanced Study Program; associate director of NCAR for the Mesoscale and Microscale Meteorology Laboratory; a senior advisor to the NCAR Director; and deputy director of NCAR Education, Engagement and Early-Career Development (EdEC).

Davis has extensive experience in the atmospheric sciences, working to understand and predict the behavior of the atmosphere related to high-impact weather—including tropical cyclones, extratropical cyclones, atmospheric rivers, severe storms, terrain-induced local wind circulations, and winter storms.

He has co-organized two major field programs, the Bow-echo and MCV Experiment (BAMEX, 2003), and the PRE-Depression Investigation of Cloud-systems in the Tropics (PREDICT) field campaign in 2010 to study the earliest stages of hurricane formation over the Atlantic Ocean. Davis has also worked for many years to develop and apply new verification methodologies to high-resolution forecasts. He has consistently bridged theoretical and applied research through a combination of numerical simulation and observational analysis.

Among his many achievements, Davis has chaired the Science Steering Committee (SSC) of the World Weather Research Programme of WMO since 2020 and has served on the SSC since 2018. He has served on the Modeling and Data Assimilation Steering Committee for Atmospheric River Reconnaissance since 2019.