David M. L. Sills is a Canadian academic and meteorologist, and is the Executive Director of the Northern Tornadoes Project at the University of Western Ontario.

Education and Career

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He obtained a BSc and Certificate of Meteorology in 1993 and a PhD in Atmospheric Science in 1998, all from York University.[1].

He worked as a severe weather scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada in Toronto from 1998 to 2019. In April 2019, he joined the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario as Executive Director of the Northern Tornadoes Project, a research group co-founded with Prof. Greg Kopp and the support of social impact fund ImpactWX[2][3].

Research

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He has contributed to research to improve the understanding of Canadian tornadoes[4] and participated in the American VORTEX2 tornado field study[5]. He led teams that developed a new national tornado climatology for Canada[6] as well as the Canadian implementation of the Enhanced Fujita Scale for wind damage rating[7]. With the Northern Tornadoes Project, he leads the effort to detect, assess and document all tornadoes that occur in Canada[8].

He has also studied mesoscale weather phenomena such as lake-breeze circulations and their influence on severe thunderstorms and hazardous air pollution[9], and co-led several related Canadian field studies including ELBOW 2001, BAQS-Met 2007, UNSTABLE 2008 and ECPASS 2015[10].

He and his work have been featured on TV and radio, and in newspapers, magazines, and podcasts, in Canada and the United States[11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24].

Awards

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He won the CMOS Rube Hornstein Medal in Operational Meteorology in 2016[25]

References

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  1. ^ "Profiles Online - Fall - 2001 - Cover Story: Storm Warnings". www.yorku.ca. Retrieved 2024-09-10.
  2. ^ "Home". ImpactWX.
  3. ^ "Western News - Tornado alley childhood shaped meteorologist". Western News. June 13, 2019.
  4. ^ "News - Tornadoes in Canada: Everything you need to know". The Weather Network.
  5. ^ Cobb, Susan. "VORTEX2". nssl.noaa.gov.
  6. ^ Sills, David M. L.; Sills, David M. L. (November 5, 2012). "Using Tornado, Lightning, and Population Data to Identify Tornado Prone Areas in Canada". AMS – via ams.confex.com.
  7. ^ Sills, David M. L.; Sills, David M. L. (November 6, 2014). "Implementation and Application of the EF-Scale in Canada". AMS – via ams.confex.com.
  8. ^ Sills, David M. L.; Sills, David M. L. (December 23, 2020). "The Northern Tornadoes Project: Uncovering Canada s True Tornado Climatology". AMS – via journals.ametsoc.org.
  9. ^ Sills, D. M. L.; Brook, J. R.; Levy, I.; Makar, P. A.; Zhang, J.; Taylor, P. A. (August 5, 2011). "Lake breezes in the southern Great Lakes region and their influence during BAQS-Met 2007". Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 11 (15): 7955 7973. Bibcode:2011ACP....11.7955S. doi:10.5194/acp-11-7955-2011 – via acp.copernicus.org.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  10. ^ Sills, David M. L.; Joe, Paul I. (August 8, 2019). "From Pioneers to Practitioners: A Short History of Severe Thunderstorm Research and Forecasting in Canada". Atmosphere-Ocean. 57 (4): 249 261. doi:10.1080/07055900.2019.1673145. S2CID 210247426 – via Taylor and Francis+NEJM.
  11. ^ Shepherd, Marshall (2021). "Northern Tornadoes Project - Tornadoes North of the Border". Weather Geeks.
  12. ^ Rinaldo, Sandie (December 13, 2021). "Tornado outbreak in "a class of its own" - expert"". CTV National News.
  13. ^ Bernstien, Jaela (May 25, 2022). "What's a derecho and why is it so destructive? The science behind this powerful storm". CBC News.
  14. ^ Kopp, Gregory; Sills, David; Brimelow, Julian (August 21, 2022). "Canada is witnessing more thunderstorm impacts than ever before". The Conversation.
  15. ^ Robinson, Mark (September 14, 2022). "Why you can't rule out tornadoes during Ontario's cooler months". The Weather Network.
  16. ^ "The Decibel - Why storms are more destructive now?". The Globe and Mail. September 14, 2022.
  17. ^ Whang, Oliver (March 10, 2023). "Where is Canada Hiding All Its Tornadoes?". The New York Times.
  18. ^ Pope, Alexandra (May 21, 2023). "The research project trying to find every tornado in Canada". Canadian Geographic.
  19. ^ Daigle, Thomas (July 14, 2023). "Canada's Tornado Alley may be moving from Prairies to Ontario-Quebec, warn researchers". CBC-TV News - The National.
  20. ^ Allen, Kate (July 19, 2023). "Are more tornadoes coming to Ontario? Twister-trackers see signs the bull's-eye is shifting". The Toronto Star.
  21. ^ Van Rassel, Allison (July 27, 2023). "Over-the-water tornado spotted on the Baie-des-Chaleurs". CBC Radio One.
  22. ^ Allen, Matt (2024). "Canada-wide tornado data at your fingertips on new website". CBC Radio One.
  23. ^ Butler, Colin (May 19, 2024). "Wildfires and tornadoes have a tangled relationship. Ontario researchers work to learn why". CBC News.
  24. ^ Hendry, Leah (June 6, 2024). "If Canada's tornado alley is shifting east, how can we better prepare?". CBC News.
  25. ^ http://www.cmosarchives.ca/Awards/Prizewinners/Prizewinners2016/SillsTaillefer.html
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