Cameron C. Lee, Ph.D.

Associate Professor | ClimRISE Lab, PI & Director
Department of Geography | Kent State University

I am an Associate Professor and the PI & Lab Director of the ClimRISE Research Lab in the Department of Geography at Kent State Univeristy - an R1 doctoral univeristy in Northeastern Ohio. My main research interests are in climate change and applied climatology, focusing on utilizing synoptic methods in a variety of applications (especially sea-level variability, extreme temperatures, and human health). Our current NOAA-funded research focuses on establishing a universal metric for defining excess temperature events in North America. Prior NASA-funded research integrated atmospheric circulation patterns and surface weather types into the development of a water clarity index as an indicator of climate change in the Great Lakes and in the coastal southeastern United States. Past NOAA-funded research projects utilized synoptic climatology to examine various human health-related multivariate indicators of climate change, while another NOAA-funded project uses ciruclation patterns to help predict daily-scale sea-level variability. Additional previous grant-based research includes projections of future heat waves and heat-related mortality in California due to climate change, and assessing the impacts of weather on asthma in New York State.

Earlier research has included studying the relationship between air pollution and weather in Cleveland, the association of circulation patterns to chlorophyll levels along the Florida Gulf Coast, the impact of weather types on winter mortality, and projecting future tornadoes in the US using atmospheric circulation patterns. My dissertation research was the development of a gridded weather typing classification (GWTC) system, which is now updated annually, extends to over 9000 locations throughout North America, and has been applied to various climate-related outcomes. In 2018, the GWTC underwent further updates including daily forecasts and an expansion to a global domain (with nearly 260,000 locations) in the GWTC-2, which was even more recently transformed into two global-scale indicators tracking our changing climate.

In addition to my research activities, I have co-authored five review articles on the topic of synoptic climatology, reviewed grant proposals for the National Science Foundation, served as a peer-reviewer for many high-impact academic journals, and have presented my research at dozens national and international conferences. I am the Chairperson of the Climate Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers, and I also serve as the Managing Editor of the International Journal of Biometeorology, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.