Sciences and Exploration Directorate

Amin Dezfuli

(SENIOR RESEARCH SCIENTIST)

Amin Dezfuli's Contact Card & Information.
Email: amin.dezfuli@nasa.gov
Phone: 301.614.6142
Org Code: 610.1
Address:
NASA/GSFC
Mail Code 610.1
Greenbelt, MD 20771
Employer: UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE CO

Research Interests


Research Interests

Earth Science: Climate

  • Regional and global drivers of climate variability and change.
  • Climatic drivers of bird migration.
  • Climate change impacts on water security and conflicts.
  • Impacts of aerosols on precipitation processes.
  • Atmospheric rivers.
  • Spatio-temporal variability of past and future climate.
  • Analysis of satellite precipitation products.

Teaching Experience


Modeling the Hydrological Cycle
Johns Hopkins University, Co-taught with Ben Zaitchik, Spring 2015.

Education


Ph.D., Atmospheric Sciences, 2011
Florida State University

M.S., Civil & Environmental Engineering, 2003
Amirkabir University of Technology

B.S., Agricultural-Water Engineering, 2000
Urmia University

Awards


  • NASA Robert H. Goddard Honor Award for Science, 2022
  • Scientific Achievement Award, NASA Global Modeling & Assimilation Office, 2021

Other Professional Information


Publications


Refereed

2024. "Insights into the causes and predictability of the 2022/23 California Flooding." Journal of Climate [10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0696.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2023. "Effect of Baseline Period on Quantification of Climate Extremes Over the United States." Geophysical Research Letters 50 (17): [10.1029/2023gl105204] [Journal Article/Letter]

2023. "Climate extremes and Middle East protests: Lessons from 2021 ." Nature Middle East [10.1038/nmiddleeast.2023.33] [Journal Article/Letter]

2022. "Coevolution of Machine Learning and Process‐based Modelling to Revolutionize Earth and Environmental Sciences: A Perspective." Hydrological Processes [10.1002/hyp.14596] [Journal Article/Letter]

2022. "Compound Effects of Climate Change on Future Transboundary Water Issues in the Middle East." Earth's Future 10 (4): [10.1029/2022ef002683] [Journal Article/Letter]

2022. "Continental Patterns of Bird Migration Linked to Climate Variability." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 103 (2): E536-E547 [10.1175/bams-d-21-0220.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2021. "A Dusty Atmospheric River Brings Floods to the Middle East." Geophysical Research Letters 48 (23): [10.1029/2021gl095441] [Journal Article/Letter]

2020. "Mechanisms Associated with Daytime and Nighttime Heat Waves over the Contiguous United States." Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 59 (11): 1865-1882 [10.1175/jamc-d-20-0053.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2020. "Representation of Modes of Variability in Six U.S. Climate Models." Journal of Climate 33 (17): 7591-7617 [10.1175/jcli-d-19-0956.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2019. "Rare atmospheric river caused record floods across the Middle East." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 101 (4): BAMS-D-19-0247.1 [10.1175/bams-d-19-0247.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2018. "Identifying Key Water Resource Vulnerabilities in Data‐Scarce Transboundary River Basins." Water Resources Research 54 (8): 5264-5281 [10.1029/2017wr021489] [Journal Article/Letter]

2018. "New Rainfall Datasets for the Congo Basin and Surrounding Regions." Journal of Hydrometeorology 19 (8): 1379-1396 [10.1175/jhm-d-18-0015.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2017. "Validation of IMERG precipitation in Africa." Journal of Hydrometeorology 18 (2017): 2817-2825 [10.1175/JHM-D-17-0139.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2017. "Precipitation characteristics in West and East Africa from satellite and in situ observations." Journal of Hydrometeorology 18 (6): 1799-1805 [10.1175/jhm-d-17-0068.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2017. "Climate of Western and Central Equatorial Africa." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science [10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.511] [Book]

2017. "The Role of Low-Level, Terrain-Induced Jets in Rainfall Variability in Tigris–Euphrates Headwaters." Journal of Hydrometeorology 18 (3): 819-835 [10.1175/jhm-d-16-0165.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2016. "Regionalizing Africa: Patterns of Precipitation Variability in Observations and Global Climate Models." Journal of Climate 29 (24): 9027-9043 [10.1175/jcli-d-16-0182.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2016. "Interdecadal Trichodesmium variability in cold North Atlantic waters." Global Biogeochemical Cycles [10.1002/2015gb005361] [Journal Article/Letter]

2016. "Biomass burning, land-cover change, and the hydrological cycle in Northern sub-Saharan Africa." Environmental Research Letters 11 (9): 095005 [10.1088/1748-9326/11/9/095005] [Journal Article/Letter]

2015. "A tool for hierarchical climate regionalization." Earth Science Informatics 8 (4): 949--958 [Journal Article/Letter]

2015. "Regional atmospheric circulation and rainfall variability in south equatorial Africa." Journal of Climate 28 (2): 809--818 [Journal Article/Letter]

2014. "HiClimR: Hierarchical climate regionalization." Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).[Available online at http://cran. r-project. org/package5HiClimR.] [Journal Article/Letter]

2014. "Subseasonal analysis of precipitation variability in the Blue Nile River Basin." Journal of climate 27 (1): 325--344 [Journal Article/Letter]

2013. "The relationship of rainfall variability in western equatorial Africa to the tropical oceans and atmospheric circulation. Part I: The boreal spring." Journal of climate 26 (1): 45--65 [Journal Article/Letter]

2013. "The relationship of rainfall variability in western equatorial Africa to the tropical oceans and atmospheric circulation. Part II: The boreal autumn." Journal of Climate 26 (1): 66--84 [Journal Article/Letter]

2012. "A Two-Century Precipitation Dataset for the Continent of Africa." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 93 (8): 1219-1231 [10.1175/bams-d-11-00212.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2012. "Spatial reconstruction of semi-quantitative precipitation fields over Africa during the nineteenth century from documentary evidence and gauge data." Quaternary Research 78 (1): 13--23 [Journal Article/Letter]

2011. "A note on long-term variations of the African easterly jet." International Journal of Climatology 31 (13): 2049--2054 [Journal Article/Letter]

2011. "Spatio-temporal variability of seasonal rainfall in western equatorial Africa." Theoretical and applied climatology 104 (1-2): 57--69 [Journal Article/Letter]

2010. "Ranking water transfer projects using fuzzy methods." Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers-Water Management 163 (4): 189--197 [Proceedings]

2010. "On the relationship of regional meteorological drought with SOI and NAO over southwest Iran." Theoretical and applied climatology 100 (1-2): 57--66 [Journal Article/Letter]

Non-Refereed

2022. "Congo Basin, a neglected world heritage." Nature Africa [Full Text] [10.1038/d44148-022-00100-0] [Journal Article/Letter]

2022. "Studying the Middle East’s sky rivers." Nature Middle East [10.1038/nmiddleeast.2022.8] [Journal Article/Letter]

2005. "Principles of Fuzzy Set Theory and its Applications in the Modeling of Water Engineering Problems (In Persian, reprinted in 2007; 2015)." [Book]

Talks, Presentations and Posters


Invited

Continental patterns of bird migration linked to climate variability

July 2022

NASA / GSFC, Science & Exploration Directorate (SED) Seminar


Climate Change Risks and Scenarios: What is at stake in the Euphrates-Tigris Basin?

June 2022

Virtual Panel Discussion at UCLA


Climate change and extreme events in the Middle East: mechanisms and impacts

2021

World Bank


Continental patterns of bird migration linked to climate variability

December 2021

The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Health Community of Practice


Atmospheric rivers bring floods and dust to the Middle East

October 2021

SSAI Live Lecture Lab


Atmospheric rivers bring floods and dust to the Middle East

May 2021

UMBC


Global and local aspects of climate variability in equatorial Africa.

May 2017

The Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), UMD, College Park.


Global and local aspects of climate variability in equatorial Africa.

March 2017

Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine.


Driving factors of rainfall variability in equatorial Africa.

June 2016

Climate & Radiation Laboratory Seminar Series, NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt.


Regional atmospheric circulation and rainfall variability in equatorial Africa.

August 2013

Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University.


Atmospheric circulation in equatorial Africa.

June 2013

The Center for Environmental and Applied Fluid Mechanics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.


Tutorial workshop on Applications of Fuzzy Sets Theory in Hydrology.

2005

Water Research Institute, Tehran, Iran.

Other

Selected Public Outreach


NASA Panelist at Awesome Con event, discussing “Bridging Climate and Art”

July 2022 - July 2022

Washington DC