GFDL Statistical Downscaling Research Team: Past Collaborators

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GFDL Statistical Downscaling Team: Past Members & Collaborators

Current team members and collaborators

NOAA GFDL federal employee:

Mary Jo Nath, NOAA/GFDL
Mary Jo retired from government service in June 2023. During her time as a team member, Mary Jo’s efforts contributed to the development, documentation and use of the team’s statistical downscaling software infrastructure. She provided support to in-house team members in the use of off-the-shelf and custom-built software. Mary Jo also played a critical role in creating, managing, and performing quality control reviews for the many data sets associated with the team’s downscaling projects.

Princeton University CIMES:

Former postdoctoral researcher & team member:

Benjamin Le Roy, postdoctoral research associate with Princeton University’s Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System (CIMES)

Benjamin Le Roy was part of our team in Princeton during parts of 2022 and 2023. He used the SURFEX model and its urban surface energy balance modeling capabilities to examine the urban heat island in Philadelphia. And more generally, his work analyzed of climate projections in the northeastern US and their use in heat and health studies. As of summer 2023, Benjamin and ESD Team members are preparing manuscripts based on his high resolution urban climate simulations and derived products that can be used in studies that inform climate risk reduction and resilience activities.

SAIC contract staff:

Former programmer & team member:

Carolyn Whitlock, SAIC scientific programmer at NOAA/GFDL

Carolyn joined the ESD team in May 2014 and for several years supported the team by working on tasks that benefited from her Python and R programming skills. In October 2023, Carolyn shifted from being a full-time member of our team to occasionally consulting with us regarding the many pieces of software she previously developed and that our team continues to use.

Other Former Research Collaborators at NOAA-GFDL & Princeton

CHESAPEAKE BAY FOCUS:
PAST: Barbara Muhling, Fernando González Taboada,Carlos Gaitan, & Desiree Tommasi
(CURRENT: Charles Stock, Liz Drenkard, Andrew Ross NOAA/GFDL)

Members of GFDL’s ESD Team have collaborated with others at GFDL on the bias correction and statistical downscaling of surface climate variables for use in marine resource impacts applications. This work has focused on multi-decadal projections as well as sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts.

♦ Ross, A. C., C. A. Stock, D. Adams-Smith, K. W. Dixon, K. L. Findell, V. S. Saba, and B. Vogt, 2020: Estuarine Forecasts at Daily Weather to Subseasonal Time Scales. Earth and Space Science, doi: 10.1029/2020EA001179.
♦ Muhling, B. A., C. F. Gaitán, C. A. Stock, V. S. Saba, D. Tommasi, and K. W. Dixon, 2017: Potential Salinity and Temperature Futures for the Chesapeake Bay Using a Statistical Downscaling Spatial Disaggregation Framework. Estuaries and Coasts, doi:10.1007/s12237-017-0280-8.
♦ Muhling, B. A., J. Jacobs, C. A. Stock, C. F. Gaitan, and V. S. Saba, 2017: Projections of the future occurrence, distribution, and seasonality of three Vibrio species in the Chesapeake Bay under a high-emission climate change scenario: Vibrio and Climate in the Chesapeake Bay. GeoHealth, doi:10.1002/2017GH000089.

Prior External Collaborators

Katharine Hayhoe, Professor at Texas Tech University
Anne Marie Stoner, Research Associate / Post Doc at Texas Tech University

Among other things, Katharine and Anne are known for their development of the ARRM statistical downscaling method. Starting in 2012, TTU and GFDL researchers have episodically collaborated on evaluating the stationarity assumption in statistical downscaling applications -and- leveraging what is learned as part of those evaluations to create improved statistical downscaling methods. Early parts of the effort were partially supported by the South Central Climate Science Center.

Kenneth Boykin, Research Associate Professor at New Mexico State University
Eric Salas, Niki Harings, & Virginia Ann Seamster, Post Doctoral Research Scientists at New Mexico State University

During the early phases of a project modeling the effect of environmental change on crucial wildlife habitat, Ginny was the ecologist at New Mexico State University with whom we at GFDL most directly interacted [USGS Project Page]. Ginny’s since taken a position at New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, so Niki and Eric are joined the effort. Two journal articles were produced as a result of this collaboration with staff and affiliates of the New Mexico Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.

♦ Salas, E. A. l., V. A. Seamster, K. G. Boykin, N. M. Harings, and K. W. Dixon, 2017: Modeling the impacts of climate change on Species of Concern (birds) in South Central U.S. based on bioclimatic variables. AIMS Environmental Science, 4, 358–385.[LINK]

♦ Salas, E. A. L., V. A. Seamster, N. M. Harings, K. G. Boykin, G. Alvarez, and K. W. Dixon, 2017: Projected Future Bioclimate-Envelope Suitability for Reptile and Amphibian Species of Concern in South Central USA. Herpetol Conserv Biol, 12, 522–547. [LINK]

Joe Barsugli, CIRES research scientist
Michael Alexander, NOAA ESRL-PSD federal researcher

Imtiaz Rangwala, CIRES

Starting in 2017, the GFDL ESD Team partnered on a project with researchers affiliated with three entities in Boulder, CO. The GFDL-centric part of the project involved expanding perfect model-based evaluations of statistical downscaling methods. Much of the analysis work is being conducted by researchers at NOAA-ESRL PSD (Physical Sciences Division) and its CIRES-Univ. of Colorado (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences) partner. Researchers at NCAR were also part of the project (see below). The primary sponsor was the Department of Defense’s Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP).

Linda Mearns, Seth McGinnis, & Rachel McCrary, NCAR research scientists

As the lead for the NA-CORDEX related ESTCP project begun in 2017 that also involves researchers affiliated with GFDL and NOAA ESRL-PSD (see above), our NCAR collaborators provided processed regional climate model output for use in statistical downscaling experiments run at GFDL, and they shared Seth’s Kernel Density Distribution Mapping (KDDM) method software.