Richard Cullather
Lamont Post Doctoral Research Fellow

Richard received his MS degree in atmospheric science from Purdue University in 1993. Following four years as a research associate at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, Richard received a PhD in 2002 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His most recent assignment was with the Advanced Study Program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Originally from South Bend, Indiana, Richard now calls Manhattan home and commutes daily to the Lamont campus. Richard’s research at LDEO is supported in part under the NOAA / GFDL and CICAR collaborative research project “Understanding Climate Change From the Medieval Warm Period to the Greenhouse Future.”

My principal research interests are concerned with the study of large-scale atmospheric circulation in polar-regions, and high-latitude precipitation processes. Some topics of interest include the evaluation of polar atmospheric circulation representations in global models and numerical analysis data sets, and diagnostic study of the interannual variability of atmospheric moisture transport and its relation to sea ice and other climate parameters. Studies produced for the IPCC using general circulation models have shown that the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere exhibit enhanced sensitivity to potential anthropogenic forcing. Even small changes in the freshwater budget of the Arctic Basin have the potential for profound consequences on global oceanic circulation, which is in turn closely linked to climate change. Additionally, changes in the net surface moisture flux are of significant importance to the mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets with profound implications for global sea level variability. The utility of atmospheric moisture parameters is recognized as effective tools for the investigation of climate variability. Atmospheric moisture variables represent the integrated product of physical processes and dynamics, and are thus highly useful for diagnostic studies and model evaluation. The surface moisture flux is the first link in a chain of events that characterizes the distribution of continental snow, land surface hydrology, and river discharge; evapotranspiration and vegetative processes; the dynamics and mass balance of ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice.