During undergrad, my initial research endeavors started by using global climate models to look at how a changing climate impacts extreme precipitation over Alaska. That then developed from looking at the impacts of a changing climate on extreme precipitation to using global climate models to investigate the transport of water vapor into the stratosphere. Throughout the initial portion of my graduate school journey, I lost interest in looking at the impact of large-scale features on climate using climate models, and began to gain interest in investigating, observationally, small-scale features that are important to constraining climate models and climate sensitivity. From this, my doctoral work focused on how shallow cloud macroscale characteristics, organization, and the environment that they develop in impact warm rain production. This led to a postdoctoral fellowship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I focused on leveraging satellite observations to investigate factors including precipitation that are important for transitions from closed to open-cell stratocumulus as seen within the major stratocumulus regions over the global oceans. This expertise in satellite remote sensing leads to my current position where I am using co-located satellite observations to analyze cloud microphysical variations.

PhD Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University, 2020

MS Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University, 2016

BS Meteorology, Iowa State University, 2014

 

Smalley K. M., M. D. Lebsock, and R. Eastman 2024: Diurnal patterns in the observed cloud liquid water path response to droplet number perturbations. Geophysical Research Letters, 51, e2023GL107323. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL107323.

Smalley K. M. and M. D. Lebsock 2023: Corrections for Geostationary Cloud Liquid Water Path Using Microwave Imagery, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-23-0030.1.

Smalley, K. M., Lebsock, M. D., Eastman, R., Smalley, M., and Witte, M. K. 2022: A Lagrangian analysis of pockets of open cells over the southeastern Pacific, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 8197–8219, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-8197-2022.

Smalley K. M., and A. D. Rapp 2021: A-Train estimates of the sensitivity of the cloud-to-rain-water ratio to cloud size, relative humidity, and aerosols, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 21, 2765-2779, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-2765-2021

Smalley K. M., and A. D. Rapp 2021: The impact of rain rate, raining patch size, and spacing on southeastern Pacific cloud fraction transitions, Environmental Research Communications, 3(5), https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7620/abf9ad

Smalley, K.M. and A.D. Rapp, 2020: The Role of Cloud Size and Environmental Moisture in Shallow Cumulus Precipitation. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, 59, 535-550, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-19-0145.1

Smalley, K. M., Glisan, J. M., & Gutowski, W. J. Jr., 2019: Alaska daily extreme precipitation processes in a subset of CMIP5 global climate models. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 124. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JD028643

Smalley, K. M., Dessler, A. E., Bekki, S., Deushi, M., Marchand, M., Morgenstern, O., Plummer, D. A., Shibata, K., Yamashita, Y., and Zeng, G., 2017: Contribution of different processes to changes in tropical lower-stratospheric water vapor in chemistry-climate models, Atmos. Chem. phys., 17, 8031-044, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-8031-2017.

• Texas A&M University Office of Graduate and Professional Studies Research & Presentation Travel Award - Fall 2019
• Associate Editor at the Journal of Oceanic and Atmospheric Technology (July 2024 – July 2025)

Research Interests:

• Cloud Microphysics
• Cloud-Aerosol-Interactions
• Stratocumulus Organization

 

Professional Societies:

• American Meteorological Society
• American Geophysical Union
• European Geophysical Union

 

Community Service

• Texas A&M University Physics Fest Volunteer
• Texas A&M University Big Event Volunteer
• Texas State Science Olympiad Meteorology Event Organizer
• Los Angeles County Science Fair Judge