Alexander (Sasha) Gershunov
Sasha is a Research Meteorologist whose research focuses on interrelated aspects of weather, climate and society. His professional interests include understanding the links between regional weather extremes and large-scale climate variability and change, the atmospheric water cycle, fire weather, climate influence on society and human influence on climate. Sasha is affiliated with various organizations focused on regionally relevant climate research with benefit to society ranging from education to resource management. He enjoys conveying scientific results not only to the scientific community via peer-reviewed research articles, but also beyond, to stakeholders and the public via various other means, documents, presentations, art, and good old-fashioned human interaction. Sasha enjoys working with colleagues and friends across borders and disciplines.

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Rosana Aguilera

Rosana is a postdoctoral researcher working at the intersection between geoscience, climate and public health. Rosana is also part of the research group directed by Prof. Tarik Benmarhnia, which focuses on environmental epidemiology and health. Rosana’s research path started as a watershed hydrologist and limnologist studying spatio-temporal patterns in riverine water quality in Mediterranean basins under global change. Her postdoctoral work pointed to the possibility that watershed-scale biogeochemical models are highly biased due to inappropriate assumptions in large, impaired rivers. During her previous postdoctoral experience at UCSB, Rosana was involved in assessing the impacts of nutrient availability and pollution on coastal ecosystems in a changing world. At her current position at SIO, Rosana has studied the link between coastal water quality and extreme precipitation events caused by atmospheric rivers, which has implications on public health. In addition, Rosana and colleagues have assessed the relationship between fine particulate matter and Santa Ana winds in Southern California, both in the absence and presence of wildfire smoke. Her most recent work is related to quantifying wildfire smoke exposure and associated patterns of respiratory illnesses, both in time and space, in a highly diverse region like Southern California.

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Rachel Clemesha

Rachel is a Project Scientist whose research focuses on coastal climate and meteorology, weather extremes, and impacts of low clouds. She developed a multidecadal satellite derived record of U.S. West Coast low clouds and her PhD work described California coastal cloud variability. Rachel enjoys using her knowledge of low cloud dynamics as a gateway to collaborate with a diverse range of scientists. The need to quantify the role (either supporting or leading) of low clouds has allowed Rachel to contribute to research related to: marine biology, solar energy, agricultural systems, epidemiology, and biodiversity. Additionally, Rachel contributes to work on weather extremes (cold spells and heat waves), atmospheric rivers, and aerosol chemistry.

 

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Tom Corringham

Tom is a postdoctoral economist whose research focuses on the social and economic impacts of climate change and extreme weather events. His areas of expertise include catastrophic floods and wildfires, atmospheric rivers, agriculture, drought, and public health. His recently published work includes studies of the costs of atmospheric rivers and of the influence of El Niño on flood damages in the western United States. He is currently involved in projects that quantify the health impacts of wildfire smoke in Southern California, assess the sustainability of California’s water supply, and forecast the increasing costs of atmospheric rivers in the coming century. His long term research objective is to identify ways in which scarce resources can be allocated to protect the most vulnerable communities from climate change and extreme events.

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Kristen Guirguis

Kristen is a project scientist whose research includes regional and global climate variability and change, weather prediction and predictability, climate and weather extremes, and impacts on human health and society. Current and recent projects focus on improving predictions of precipitation extremes in California on extended range to seasonal timescales, off-season heat waves in California and their impact on snowpack and water resources, and heat related health impacts on populations in California. Her work has contributed to recent governmental climate change assessment reports, and her research projects often include collaborations with local or State government agencies and non-profit organizations to work together to help improve outcomes of heat waves and other types of extreme weather.

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Janin Guzman Morales

Janin Guzman Morales is a postdoctoral scholar at SIO in the WECLIMA group. Her research focuses on the Santa Ana Winds (SAWs) of Southern California in the present and future climate and their interconnection with wildfire and coastal heat-waves. She has studied SAWs’ historical behavior and variability at diurnal, seasonal, interannual and long-term time scales and the influence of climate natural variability (ENSO and PDO) on SAW activity.  Her work has also explored changes, in frequency and intensity, of SAWs in future climate projections of the 21st century. Most recently, she has contributed to characterizing SAW events by the temperature response over SoCal coastal region and their potential to create heat-waves.  Her in-progress research is centered on the coordination of SAWs with other downslope winds systems in California (e.g., Diablo winds of Northern California) and their connection with California-wide wildfire risk.

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Rosy Luna Niño

Rosy is a postdoctoral scholar whose research includes regional modeling, weather events, interannual variability, climate change, as well as their regional and local impacts. Her work has explored the dynamic of the winter phenomena: subtropical jet stream, cold fronts, winds in the Gulf of Mexico (Nortes), and their future climate projections for the 21st century. During her Ph.D. and previous collaborations, Rosy has also studied the dynamical models WRF and RegCM, to better understand and simulate regional and local processes like winter precipitation and intense winds in Mexico (Nortes, Tehuanos). Her initial work at CW3E/Scripps focuses on the statistical seasonal climate and hydrology – precipitation, temperature, streamflow – prediction for the Western US related as well as investigating the role of Atmospheric Rivers in our varying and changing hydroclimate.

 


Tamara Shulgina

Tamara is an Assistant Project Scientist studying atmospheric river activity on time scales from hours to 1.5 centuries and its role in extreme precipitation events and water resources of Western North America. Tamara is also part of the seasonal-to-subseasonal predictions (S2S) research group at the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes (CW3E).  In her Fulbright research at SIO UCSD, Tamara developed a novel methodology for detecting atmospheric rivers (ARs), yielding an extensive 71-year record of ARs land-falling along the west coast of North America. Her postdoctoral research focused on investigating the seasonal cycle and the interannual-interdecadal variability of atmospheric rivers, as well as the role of ARs in the projected enhancement of extreme precipitation over California and the Western U.S. using global climate models. Tamara’s research interests include assessment of natural and anthropogenic sources of predictability of future atmospheric rivers and related extreme precipitation events impacting western North America. Her ongoing research focuses on the predictive capacity of Sea Surface Temperature – precipitation linkages to improve prediction of water resources and extreme hydrologic events in Western North America. Along with other projects, she is working to evaluate trends in snow line elevation in the Sierra Nevada mountains and investigating the contribution of atmospheric rivers to these trends.