Writer/editor/media relations associate
bhenson@ucar.edu | 303-497-8605

Photos for download

high resolution portrait   |   high resolution portrait2

What I do

• Serve as chief writer and co-editor of AtmosNews, a website that covers research and related activities from NCAR, UCP, and our community partners. In the Opinion section, I write first-person columns analyzing weather events, climate trends, and related research.
  
  
• Help populate the AtmosNews Twitter and Facebook feeds.
  
  
• Edit UCAR Update. This monthly newsletter keeps UCAR members and affiliates apprised of events and opportunities.
  
  

• Write news releases and assist with media inquiries, particularly those involving severe weather (tornadoes, hurricanes, floods) and climate change.
  
  
• Assist with photography and Drupal-based Web design.

My background

I was born and raised in the Great Plains metropolis of Oklahoma City. Surrounded by wild weather, I grew up fascinated by it. My bachelor's degree at Rice University featured an interdisciplinary major in meteorology and psychology. I went to graduate school in both meteorology and journalism at the University of Oklahoma. For my M.A. thesis in journalism, I studied the broadcasting of severe weather warnings on local television.

I've been at UCAR & NCAR since 1989, covering the wide range of research and related activities conducted by NCAR, UOP, and UCAR's members and affiliates. I've also given a number of public and scholastic talks on weather and climate for audiences in the United States, England, and Australia. Working with UCAR exhibits staff, I helped conceptualize and created text and illustrations for the Walter Orr Roberts Weather Trail, the nation's first such interpretive exhibit.

Other writing

I am a contributing editor of Weatherwise and have written for Nature, Scientific American, Audubon, AIR & SPACE/Smithsonian, Sierra, the Guardian, and a number of other publications. I was a frequent correspondent for the Weather Notebook radio series and occasionally guest-blog for Capital Weather Gang (Washington Post). I've also written several books:

   Weather on the Air: A History of Broadcast Meteorology (American Meteorological Society, 2010)
       Honorable mention, 2010 ASLI Choice (History), Atmospheric Science Librarians International

   The Rough Guide to Climate Change (Penguin, 2006; third edition, 2011)
       Shortlisted for 2007 UK Royal Society Prize for Science Books

   The Rough Guide to Weather (Penguin, 2002; second edition, 2008)

A couple of other interests

• Bicycling: I've done several tours of 200-800 miles and spend a lot of my transportation time on two wheels. I'm also very interested in urban planning, especially public transit and walking/biking options.
  
  
• Storm photography: While on research experiments and personal travel, I've seen more than 30 tornadoes and a vast array of severe thunderstorms. Below is a photograph of a rotating LP (low-precipitation) supercell near Wray, Colorado, on June 2, 1999, with a small rain core impersonating a tornado.
  
  

©1999 Robert Henson