GFDL Statistical Downscaling Research Team Members & Collaborators

Return to the GFDL Statistical Downscaling Team’s Home Page

GFDL Statistical Downscaling Research Team Members & Collaborators

Former team members and past collaborators

NOAA GFDL federal employees:

Keith Dixon, NOAA/GFDL – Team Lead
Keith’s research focuses on the use of state-of-the-art computer models to simulate the global climate and connecting those model results to applications relevant to adaptation and planning. His interest in statistical downscaling stems from a desire to assess the capabilities of climate models and downscaling methods. Keith also is active in the science communications arena, seeking to enhance the exchange of scientifically credible information between the realms of large-scale climate research and relevant local-scale impacts and applications.

Keith’s GFDL webpage

Liqiang Sun, NOAA/GFDL
Liqiang’s research activities are focused on regional climate modeling and downscaling, understanding regional climate variability across time scales, and improving climate predictions and projections. He also has fifteen years of experience in real-time climate forecasting and verification. Prior to joining the GFDL team, for more than twelve years Liqiang was part of the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies and served as the deputy science lead for the National Climate Assessment Technical Support Unit.

Princeton University CIMES:

Postdoctoral Research Associate:

Weixuan (Rosa) Xu, Princeton University’s Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System (CIMES)
Rosa officially joined our team in September 2024 as part of our Downscaling Climate Projections for Heat and Health Applications project. Rosa completed her Ph.D. at Brown University in 2023, conducting research focusing on climate modeling and climate dynamics. She then worked for a year at McKinsey & Company as a climate scientist involved in climate resilience analytics, risk assessment analyses and communicating science-based results to business clients. Rosa’s knowledge and experiences in climate science, risk assessment, and climate services benefit the team’s research-to-services (R2S) efforts and has led to two published jounral articles thus far.
♦ Xu, W. R., K. W. Dixon, N. Zenes, and D. Adams-Smith, 2025: Sometimes missing the heat: the risk of underestimating extreme heat days with daily maximum heat index approximation. International Journal of Biometeorology, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-025-03001-7
♦ Xu, W. R., K. W. Dixon, N. Zenes, and J. Lanzante, 2026: Examining the Impact of Bias Correction Configurations on a Multivariate Meteorological Index: A Case Study of Heat Index Analysis in the Northeast United States. Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology, https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-25-0128.1

NOAA GFDL federal collaborator:

John Lanzante, NOAA/GFDL
John is a member of GFDL’s Weather and Climate Dynamics Division who affiliates with our team on certain projects. His work involves the use of statistics and data analysis techniques as applied to both observed and model (GCM) generated data. Recently, John has been focusing on the representation of climate extremes (i.e., the tails of the distribution) in bias corrected and statistical downscaled data products generated by different techniques.

John’s GFDL webpage

Other Internal Research Collaborators at NOAA-GFDL & Princeton

MARINE ECOSYSTEMS FOCUS:

CURRENT:
Charles Stock, NOAA/GFDL
Andrew Ross NOAA/GFDL

Liz Drenkard, NOAA/GFDL

Members of GFDL’s ESD Team collaborate with Charlie Stock and others in GFDL’s Marine Ecosystems and Downscaling Division on the bias correction and statistical downscaling of surface climate variables for use in marine resource impacts applications. To date, this work has focused on multi-decadal projections as well as sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts.

♦ Drenkard, E. J., C. Stock, A. C. Ross, K. W. Dixon, and Coauthors, 2021: Next-generation regional ocean projections for living marine resource management in a changing climate. ICES Journal of Marine Science, fsab100, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsab100.
♦ 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.

Other Current Active Collaborators

Nicole Zenes, Cornell University – Applied Climate Research Scientist
Nickie was part of the GFDL-based ESD team from July 2023 through October 2025, and is now part of Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University. She joined us after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Utah where she studied how drought and climate change affect forest ecosystems. Her undergraduate degree is from Princeton University.

Graham Taylor, Cornell University – Postdoctoral Researcher
Graham joined our team in October 2024 as part of the multi-institutional Fit for Purpose research project. Graham completed his Ph.D. at Portland State University in 2024, where he researched how climate change may affect weather in western North America, especially related to large-scale atmospheric circulation and wildfire. In late 2025, Graham’s funding for the project shifted, and he is now part of Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University.