Contact Information
Biography
Dr. Trapp is a Professor with the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Before joining Illinois in 2014, he was a Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Purdue University from 2003-2014, and a research scientist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory (through the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies) in Norman, Oklahoma from 1996-2003. Four years of his tenure with NSSL were spent as a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
Research Interests
Dr. Trapp's research interests include the dynamics and observations of mesoscale convective systems, severe thunderstorms, and tornadoes; mesoscale modeling and predictability.
Education
- Ph.D. in Meteorology, The University of Oklahoma, 1994
- M.S. in Meteorology, Texas A&M University, 1989
- B.S. in Agriculture/Atmospheric Science, University of Missouri-Columbia, 1985
Additional Campus Affiliations
Director, School of Earth, Society, and Environment
Professor, Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
External Links
Recent Publications
Buckingham, T. J., Schultz, D. M., Markowski, P. M., & Trapp, R. J. (2025). Two archetypes of tornadic quasi-linear convective systems in the United Kingdom: Relevance of horizontal shearing instability to vortexgenesis and maintenance. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.4967
Gopalakrishnan, D., Cuervo-Lopez, C., Allen, J. T., Trapp, R. J., & Robinson, E. (2025). A Comprehensive Evaluation of Biases in Convective Storm Parameters in CMIP6 Models over North America. Journal of Climate, 38(4), 947-971. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-24-0165.1
Berman, M. T., Trapp, R. J., Nesbitt, S. W., & Di Girolamo, L. (2024). The Observed Impact of the Lower Stratospheric Thermodynamic Environment on Overshooting Top Characteristics During the RELAMPAGO-CACTI Field Campaign. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129(10), Article e2023JD040348. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JD040348
Graber, M., Trapp, R. J., & Wang, Z. (2024). The regionality and seasonality of tornado trends in the United States. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 7(1), Article 144. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-024-00698-y
Kosiba, K. A., Lyza, A. W., Trapp, R. J., Rasmussen, E. N., Parker, M., Biggerstaff, M. I., Nesbitt, S. W., Weiss, C. C., Wurman, J., Knupp, K. R., Coffer, B., Chmielewski, V. C., Dawson, D. T., Bruning, E., Bell, T. M., Coniglio, M. C., Murphy, T. A., French, M., Blind-Doskocil, L., ... Turner, D. D. (2024). The Propagation, Evolution, and Rotation in Linear Storms (PERiLS) Project. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 105(10), E1768-E1799. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-22-0064.1