Columbia University Graduate Study at NASA/GISS

Program Alumni

This page lists alumni of the Columbia University graduate program at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1985. Please note that it does not include Columbia alumni who completed their research prior to that date nor GISS student alumni who were affiliated with another university's degree program (e.g., New York University, Rutgers University, etc.).

Year Student Dissertation Title
2025 Meagan A. DeLessio Brown Carbon in an Earth System Model: A Scheme to Study Biomass Burning Aerosols
Miriam Nielsen Interactions Between Soil Moisture and Precipitation in a Changing World
2023 Ivan Mitevski Asymmetric and Non-monotonic Response of the Climate System to Idealized CO2 Forcing
2022 Nathan Lenssen Uncertainty and Predictability of Seasonal-to-Centennial Climate Variability
2019 Yuchao Gao The Impact of Organic Aerosol Volatility on Particle Microphysics and Global Climate
Keren Mezuman Fire and Aerosol Modeling for Air Quality and Climate Studies
Kenneth A. Sinclair Polarimetric Retrievals of Cloud Droplet Number Concentration: Towards a Better Understanding of Aerosol-Cloud Interactions
2018 Bernard Lipat Quantifying and Understanding the Linkages between Clouds and the General Circulation of the Atmosphere
Ethan Coffel Extreme Heat and Its Impacts in a Changing Climate
2015 Sloan J. Coats Paleoclimate Model-Data Comparisons of Hydroclimate over North America with a Focus on Megadroughts
2014 William G.K. Martin Advancements for Three-Dimensional Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere
2013 Emmi Yonekura Tropical Cyclone Risk Assessment Using Statistical Models
2012 Sonali P. Shukla The Impact of a Warmer Climate on Atmospheric Circulation with Implications for the Asian Summer Monsoon
2011 Jing Li Improving Our Understanding of Atmospheric Aerosols and Their Climate Effects: Implications for Satellite Retrievals and GCM Simulations
Jennifer Aminzade Water Availability in a Warming World
2010 Kirk D. Knobelspiesse Atmospheric Aerosol Optical Property Retrieval with Scanning Polarimeters
2009 Christine Veeder Modeling Climate and Production-related Impacts on Ice-core Beryllium-10
Joy Romanski Investigating the Role of Individual Diabatic Heating Components in Global Atmospheric Circulation and Climate Sensitivity: An Energetics Approach
2008 Peng Xian Seasonal Migration of the ITCZ and Implications for Aerosol Radiative Impact
2007 Radley Horton An Observational and Modeling Study of the Regional Impacts of Climate Variability
2006 Allegra N. LeGrande The Climate Imprint on the Isotopic Composition of Water: Observations, Proxies, and Coupled Isotopic Model Simulations
Kirstie Lynn Stramler The Influence of Synoptic Atmospheric Motions on the Arctic Energy Budget
2005 Junye Chen Understanding the Observed Tropical and Midlatitude Radiative Energy Budget in the Context of Long-Term Climate Variations
Michael P. Bauer Observed and Simulated Humidity Variations
2004 Duane E. Thresher Multi-Century Simulations of LGM and Present Day Climate Using an Accelerated Coupled GCM Carrying Water Isotope Tracers, with Comparisons to Ocean Sediment/Ice Cores and Observations
Scott M. Gianelli Retrieving Aerosols, Ozone, and NO2 Using MFRSR, RSS, and CIMEL Data
Li Liu Optical Characterization of Complex Aerosol and Cloud Particles: Remote Sensing and Climatological Implications
2003 Reha V. Cakmur Mineral Dust Variability and the Parameterization of Emission Due to Unresolved Circulations
Maxwell Kelley Water Tracers and the Hydrologic Cycle in a GCM
Jiping Liu Sea Ice Climatology: Variations and Teleconnections: Observational and Modeling Studies
Zhengzhao Luo Investigation of Tropical Cirrus, Their Variability, Evolution and Relation to Upper Tropospheric Water Vapor
2002 Margaret A. Rozendaal Characterizing the Variability of Marine Subtropical Low Clouds and Studying Their Interaction in an SCM
2000 Ting Chen Towards a More Complete Understanding of Cloud Radiative Effects
1999 Sukeshi Sheth Ocean Circulation Changes and Greenhouse Warming Predicted by Coupled GCMs
Jacek Chowdhary Multiple Scattering of Polarized Light in Atmosphere-Ocean Systems: Application to Sensitivity Analyses of Aerosol Polarimetry
Bing Ye Cumulus Anvil Cloud Properties, CAPE and Climate Change
Timothy P. Eichler An Evaluation of ENSO and Climate Change Using the GCM/ZC Model
1998 Sun Wong The Impacts of the Antarctic Ozone Hole on the Middle Atmosphere
1997 Fan Xu Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR): Variability and Retrieval
Yao Jin Investigation of Cirrus Cloud Climatology by Satellite Remote Sensing
Junhong Wang Determination of Cloud Vertical Structure from Upper Air Observations and Its Effects on Atmospheric Circulation in a GCM
1996 Margaret Lee Kneller Paleoclimate from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Present: Pollen and Plant Macrofossil Records from the U.S. Southeast Accompanied by a Goddard Institute for Space Studies General Circulation Model Simulation
Aiguo Dai Global Precipitation Variability and Its Relationship with Other Climate Changes
1995 Marc Lynch-Stieglitz Development and Validation of New Land-surface Model for Regional and Global Climate Modeling
Bing Lin Observation of Cloud Liquid Water Path Over Oceans: Optical and Microwave Remote Sensing Methods
1994 Oleg Schilling A Two-point Closure Model of Turbulent Compressible Convection and Application to Stellar Interiors
1993 Colin G. Price Global Lightning Activity and Climate Change
Judah L. Cohen Cyclogenesis Along the East Coast of North America
1992 Mark A. Chandler The Early Jurassic climate: General circulation model simulations and the paleoclimate record
Qingyuan Han Global Survey of Effective Particle Size in Liquid Water Clouds by Satellite Observations
George Tselioudis Global Patterns of Cloud Optical Thickness Variation with Temperature and the Implications for Climate Change
1991 Rong Fu Deep Convection and Its Relation to the Large-scale Circulation in the Tropical Pacific
1990 Jeffrey R. Chasnov Development and Application of an Improved Subgrid Model for Homogeneous Turbulence
Fenglin Yin Numerical Modeling of Ocean Deep Water Circulation
Richard Seager Modeling Sea-surface Temperature and Low-level Winds in the Tropics
Helene Wilson Measurement of Fraction of Green Vegetation Cover from Landsat in a Heterogeneous Landscape
1989 Roseanne D'Arrigo Dendrochronological Modeling and Reconstruction of Large-Scale Climate Variability in Recent Centuries and its Relation to Atmospheric Forcing Functions
1987 Leonard Smith Lacunarity and Chaos in Nature
1986 Katharine C. Prentice The Influence of the Terrestrial Biosphere on Seasonal Atmosphere Carbon Dioxide: An Empirical Model
1985 Walter A. Robinson Interactions Among Planetary Waves and the Generation of Traveling Long Waves

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