Group Members
Christopher Skinner, Assistant Professor
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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 processes that control the intensity of the hydrologic cycle and the subsequent impacts on precipitation and terrestrial moisture availability.
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. |
Graduate Students
Tyler Harrington, PhD Student
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Tyler Harrington is a PhD 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 a B.S. in atmospheric science and B.A. in mathematics (2019) from the University of Kansas, and a M.S. in Atmospheric Science (2021) and M.S. in Mathematics (2022) from UMass Lowell. 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. |
Ali Fallahmaraghi, PhD Student
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Ali Fallahmaraghi is a PhD 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 received an M.S. in Atmospheric Science (2023) from UMass Lowell. 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 a research stay (2019) at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry (MPI-BGC) with Dr. Rene Orth. Before that, he conducted research in the hydrology group at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) with Dr. Peter Berg. 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. Please see his relevant papers to learn more. |
Undergraduate Students
Victoria Wisniewski
Victoria is interested in hurricane communication and preparedness and how we can effectively communicate hurricane risks to the public. She is UMass Lowell's first National Weather Service (NWS) Student Career On-site Training (SCOuT) Program intern!
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Kyle Nadeau
Kyle is interested in finding ways to use historical climate data to help local agriculture prepare for the effects of climate change. He's working to understand how the use of irrigation influences temperature and humidity in agricultural areas.
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Group Alumni
Allison Hannigan, MS '22
Current position:
Teaching Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, State University of New York Oneonta.
Thesis title: "Application of back trajectory analysis to explore the processes that control humidity during extreme heat events in the Northeast United States".
Teaching Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, State University of New York Oneonta.
Thesis title: "Application of back trajectory analysis to explore the processes that control humidity during extreme heat events in the Northeast United States".
Troy King, MS '23
Current position:
Weather station technician, University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Thesis title: "An Analysis of Extreme Evaporation Events, and the Role of
Extreme Evaporation in the Climate System".
Weather station technician, University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Thesis title: "An Analysis of Extreme Evaporation Events, and the Role of
Extreme Evaporation in the Climate System".