Ross Alter

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Eltahir Research group.  I earned a B.S. in Meteorology in 2009 and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science in 2014 from Rutgers University, NJ.

My research interests lie in the connection between agriculture and the atmosphere.  Specifically, I seek to identify the impacts of irrigated and non-irrigated cropland on weather and climate patterns in various regions, including Africa and the United States.  To better isolate these changes from other confounding factors, I run simulations with a regional climate model and compare the results to observational data, analyzing changes in rainfall, temperature, and other relevant variables.  We believe that understanding any unintentional impacts of agriculture on the atmosphere can fill in a knowledge gap in climate research and help with attribution of regional changes in weather and climate.