Alan W. Black, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Research, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University
Program Manager, Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program

I am a geographer and atmospheric scientist with expertise in the impact of weather on transportation, hazards and societal interactions, convective and nonconvective windstorms, applied climatology, response to severe weather warnings, and the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and volunteered geographic information (VGI) in meteorology and climatology.

Recent and Ongoing Research:

  • Effects of rainfall, snowfall, and frozen precipitation on rates of vehicle crashes, injuries, and fatalities
  • Changes in precipitation related crash rates under future climate
  • Climatology of nonconvective windstorms
  • Impacts of windstorm events in relation to National Weather Service warnings and advisories
  • Quality of human-estimated high wind reports and human perceptions of high wind
  • Geographies of nonconvective and convective wind fatalities, and of warned and unwarned fatalities due to convective wind and tornadoes
  • Travel of tornado debris during the 27 April 2011 tornado outbreak as determined using social media and VGI
Below: Research illustrating the average number of fatalities per year from various meteorological hazards for the period 1996–2011, highlighting the number of fatalities resulting from winter precipitation related motor vehicle crashes (left) and tracks of debris objects that traveled a) < 50 km; b) 50 to 150 km; c) 150 to 250 km; d) >250km from the 27 April 2011 Tornado Outbreak as derived from social media data (right)

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Page last updated 15 August 2016