He is known for his participation and leadership in international field projects employing meteorological radar and research aircraft around the world in the tropics and midlatitudes and for serving on science teams for global satellite programs that deployed radar in space.

[1] Houze has been on the science teams for three NASA satellites for the global study of clouds and precipitation.

[6] In 2014, he received the Royal Meteorological Society's highest research award, the Symons Gold Medal.

In 1974, he participated in the Global Atmospheric Research Programme’s Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE)—the largest field campaign ever to study weather.

[10] Since these projects he has conducted radar studies over all the major oceans and over mountain ranges in Europe and North America.

The GATE experience launched a career of using radar on ships, islands and aircraft in field campaigns around the world—in northern Australia, Malaysia, India, Africa, the Italian Alps, the Solomon Islands, the Maldives, and various locations in the U.S.—to study fronts passing over the Alps, Cascade, and Olympic Mountains, to fly into hurricanes over the Gulf, Atlantic, and Pacific, and to study thunderstorms over Kansas.