Houraa Daher

Dr. Houraa Daher is an Associate Fellow for Climate and Energy at ORF Middle East. Her current research focuses on future climate change projections in the Middle East. She is interested in analyzing the impacts climate change will have on extreme climate events (heatwaves, droughts, etc) and security (water, energy, and food), as well as the environmental repercussions (land, sea, and atmosphere) going into the future.

Preceding her position at ORF, Houraa worked as a researcher within the Lebanese government in Beirut investigating the local impacts of climate change on Lebanon. And as a postdoctoral researcher in Miami, Florida, she completed a project on future climate assessment in the Mediterranean region using downscaled climate models. She has also worked at both NOAA and NASA government agencies in the US. Additionally, Houraa is a seagoing physical oceanographer with over 170 days at sea including research cruises to the Arctic Ocean with NATO, the Icelandic Basin, and South Africa (amongst others), analyzing changes to the ocean’s currents and physical properties. She has also volunteered her time with UN-Ocean Decade endorsed actions regarding Ocean Literacy.

Houraa holds a Ph.D. from the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Meteorology and Physical Oceanography with her thesis on the Southern Hemisphere climate and its response to ozone recovery. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor in Earth Systems Engineering and Mathematics with a focus on tides and their energy dissipation. While at the University of Michigan, she was also selected as a Stamps Scholar.