Dr. Elizabeth Austin is a world-renowned atmospheric physicist and the founder and president of WeatherExtreme Ltd. She is one of the foremost experts on the worldwide impact of weather and extreme weather. She is also regarded as one of the world’s leading forensic meteorologists, Elizabeth’s expert witness experience includes civil and criminal cases – state and Federal actions in the U.S. and Worldwide. She has worked and counseled on well over 1,500 cases –ranging from aviation, wildfires, auto accidents, agriculture, kite surfing, boating, avalanches, skiing accidents and tornadoes and hurricanes. Elizabeth has acted as personal advisor and climate & weather expert for such distinguished clients as NASA, Federal Express, Air France, Rockwell Collins, Time Warner, Southern California Edison, The United Nations and the Department of Justice to mention a few. A partial client list is available on www.weatherextreme.com.

She has appeared on-air, lectured and taught courses and seminars on weather and climate all over the world, including Germany, China, New Zealand, France, Australia, and the USA as well. She has the well-deserved reputation of being easy to work with and enjoys a unique ability to present scientific and highly technical matters in easy to understand everyday language. This ability also translates very well on camera where she’s appeared often and is quite comfortable and professional in front of the camera.

Dr. Austin is also the chief scientist/meteorologist for the ground-breaking and record breaking Perlan Project. The Airbus Perlan II Project is an aeronautic event preparing to fly a manned glider to a record-breaking altitude of 90,000 feet in Argentina. The project has previously set the world record of just over 50,000 feet with an earlier generation glider.

Among her many honors is being the recipient of a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award at Laboratoire de Physique de l’Atmosphere, CNRS, Universitie de la Reunion, Reunion Island, France and the Distinguished Teaching award at the four year Sierra Nevada College, Incline Village, Nevada. She is also an affiliate professor at the University of Nevada at Reno. She is an active member of the National Weather Association and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) including serving on the AMS Executive Committee. She not only holds the distinguished honor being a Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM) as well as having held a position on the CCM Board and as the chairperson of the Board.

Henry T. Harrison Award: For Outstanding Contributions By A Consulting Meteorologist. American Meteorological Society “For serving the meteorological profession, her clients, and the Society with integrity and professionalism over the course of an exemplary career.”

American Meteorological Society Fellow: Fellows shall have made outstanding contributions to the atmospheric or related oceanic or hydrologic sciences or their applications during a substantial period of time. New Fellows are elected from not more than two-tenths of one percent of all AMS members.

Elizabeth’s book, Treading On Thin Air, is published by the distinguished publisher, Pegasus Books.

Austin resides in the Reno/Lake Tahoe area of Nevada, with her husband, Alan Austin, a former Jet and helicopter pilot and photographer/cinematographer, and their eighteen-year-old son, Moody. She is the daughter of award-winning film music composer Patrick Williams.