Group Members

Christopher Skinner, Assistant Professor
Christopher Skinner is a climate scientist interested in climate change and its impacts on humans and the natural world. His research combines instrumental and proxy records of climate with process models of the earth system to understand the underlying physical processes behind societally and ecologically relevant climate changes in Earth's past and future. He is especially interested in the ways land surface properties shape high-impact weather conditions, such as extreme heat, rainfall, and air quality.
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Chris grew up outside of Boston, MA and obtained a B.S. (2008) in Atmospheric Science from Cornell University and a Ph.D. (2014) in Environmental Earth System Science from Stanford University with Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh. Prior to UMass Lowell he was a Research Scientist and Turner Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan with Dr. Chris Poulsen.  

Tyler Harrington, M.S. Student

Tyler Harrington is a masters student in UMass Lowell's Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. He is interested in climate dynamics, land-atmosphere interactions, and mesoscale meteorology.

​He grew up in Dallas, TX and received his B.S. in atmospheric science and B.A. in mathematics from the University of Kansas in 2019. He has worked at the FAA's Weather Research Division conducting a congressional research project on the impacts of extreme weather on the National Airspace and the USGS Organic Geochemistry Research Lab working with environmental samples and lab data. Tyler was also the first NOAA SCOuT Program student and has spent time at the Aviation Weather Center, Center Weather Service Unit KC, NOAA Central Region HQ, NWS Training Center, and the NWS WFO Topeka. 

UMass Lowell profiled group member Tyler Harrington! Check it out here.

Allison Hannigan, M.S. Student

Allison Hannigan is a masters student in UMass Lowell's Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. She is interested in the effects of a changing climate on extreme weather events.

​Having grown up in the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York, Allison is no stranger to varying weather events, and like many in the field, her passion for weather began at a very young age. She received her B.S. in Meteorology  and minor in Mathematics from the State University of New York (SUNY), College at Oneonta. While at SUNY Oneonta, she lead an original research project to determine the reliability of the rain-snow line and improve forecast aids during winter weather events. She presented this work at AMS, AGU, and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation. Her research has since been published in the journal Atmospheric and Climate Sciences. 

Ali Fallahmaraghi, M.S. Student

Ali Fallahmaraghi is a masters student in UMass Lowell's Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. He collaborates with Prof. Christopher Skinner and Prof. Mathew Barlow and his research focuses on the influence of land surface processes in regulating water resources.  

He grew up in his father’s garden located in a mountainous village close to the desert in Kashan, Iran. His mother says his interest in the biosphere started early, as she often found him in the trees picking fruit. Growing up, he became quite familiar with the role of heatwaves and drought in water and food security and aims to reduce their impacts, striving to contribute to building a society with zero hunger. He received a B.S. in Civil Engineering and continued his higher education in water resources management at Shiraz University, Iran. He is interested in using his background in land surface processes within cross-disciplinary research to explore the causes of drought and heatwaves and examine the interaction between the land surface and the atmosphere in such extreme events.    
 
He spent his research stay at MPI-BGC (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Dr. Rene Orth, 2019). Before that, he has conducted research in the hydrology group at SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Dr. Peter Berg, 2018). During these two fruitful collaborations, he assessed the uncertainty across multiple state-of-the-art precipitation datasets and examined its propagation into the water cycle through a land-surface model over catchments distributed across Europe. His relevant papers  are published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at conferences like EGU 2019 and 2020.