Walter Lyons, PhD

Walter Lyons is president of FMA Research, Inc., an independent meteorological research and consulting company specializing in atmospheric electricity and lightning science. Lyons earned his undergraduate degree from Saint Louis University before completing his Ph.D. in atmospheric science at the University of Chicago, where his fellowship began in 1965. He is internationally recognized for his observational and theoretical contributions to lightning science, including seminal research on sprites—large-scale luminous phenomena above thunderstorm clouds—that he helped document and characterize beginning in the early 1990s. His work has contributed to the understanding of how thunderstorms interact with the upper atmosphere and ionosphere.