Alexander Ruane

BIOGRAPHY:

Dr. Alex Ruane is a Research Physical Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and an adjunct Associate Research Scientist at the Columbia University Center for Climate Systems Research in New York City. Alex serves as the Research Coordinator and Climate Team Leader for the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP; www.agmip.org), an international, transdisciplinary project connecting climate science, crop modeling, and economic modeling to place regional agricultural impacts of climate change into their global economic context to assess uncertainties, vulnerability, and world food security. Alex’s research uses a variety of climate and impacts assessment models to examine the influence of climate variability and change on a variety of sectors including agriculture, water resources, urban areas, infrastructure, energy, and human health, leading to the development of adaptation strategies and decision support tools for stakeholders and policy makers who need to understand vulnerabilities and uncertainties to successfully manage risk. Alex leads the Coordinated Climate-Crop Modeling Project (C3MP; www.agmip.org./c3mp) in its investigations of climate sensitivity at more than 1000 worldwide crop and livestock simulation sets, and has developed the AgMERRA climate forcing dataset to support agricultural impacts modeling. Alex also works to develop new methods to tailor climate scenarios for unique applications around the world, and investigates observational methods, high-frequency variations, and extreme characteristics of hydroclimate. Alex conducted his doctoral work studying the water cycle in the climate group at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and received a B.S. in atmospheric science at Cornell University.