About

Hello! I am a NYC-based climate scientist and data scientist who worked most recently as a Climate Change Data Scientist at Gro Intelligence on their climate science team.

Before that, I was a postdoc studying climate and tropical meteorology in the Ocean and Climate Physics division at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. There, I worked with Adam Sobel and Suzana Camargo on characterizing the climatology of tropical cyclones in the NASA GISS ModelE3 global climate model, and with Michela Biasutti on studying the polar amplification of global warming and the influence of continents on climate in the TRACMIP project.

This website is a place to keep academia-related things, like my full list of publications, while I pursue opportunities in the private sector. I might add more to it in the future.

Education

Ph.D., Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, 2018

M.S., Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, 2015

B.S., Geology and Geophysics, Yale University, 2012

Links

Full-length academic CV (pdf)

Github

Google Scholar

ORCID

LinkedIn

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Russotto, R.D., J.D.O. Strong, S.J. Camargo, A. Sobel, G.S. Elsaesser, M. Kelley, A. Del Genio, Y. Moon, and D. Kim (2022). Evolution of Tropical Cyclone Properties Across the Development Cycle of the GISS-E3 Global Climate Model. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 14, e2021MS002601, doi: 10.1029/2021MS002601; analysis code on Zenodo

Biasutti, M., R.D. Russotto, A. Voigt, and C.C. Blackmon-Luca (2021). The Effect of an Equatorial Continent on the Tropical Rain Belt. Part 1: Annual Mean Changes in the ITCZ. Journal of Climate, 34, 5813-5828, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0739.1.

Russotto, R.D. and M. Biasutti (2020). Polar amplification as an inherent response of a circulating atmosphere: results from the TRACMIP aquaplanets. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2019GL086771, doi: 10.1029/2019GL086771; analysis code on Github

Russotto, R.D. and T.P. Ackerman (2018). Changes in clouds and thermodynamics under solar geoengineering and implications for required solar reduction. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 18, 11905-11925, doi: 10.5194/acp-18-11905-2018; analysis code on Zenodo

Russotto, R.D. and T.P. Ackerman (2018). Energy transport, polar amplification, and ITCZ shifts in the GeoMIP G1 ensemble. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 18, 2287-2305, doi: 10.5194/acp-18-2287-2018; analysis code on Zenodo

Smyth, J.E., R.D. Russotto, and T. Storelvmo (2017). Thermodynamic and dynamic responses of the hydrological cycle to solar dimming. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 17, 6439-6453, doi: 10.5194/acp-17-6439-2017

Lenferna, A., R. Russotto, A. Tan, S. Gardiner, and T. Ackerman (2017). Relevant climate response tests for stratospheric aerosol injection: A combined ethical and scientific analysis. Earth's Future, 5, 577-591, doi: 10.1002/2016EF000504

Russotto, R.D., T.P. Ackerman, and D.R. Durran (2016). Sensitivity of thin cirrus clouds in the tropical tropopause layer to ice crystal shape and radiative absorption. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 121, 2955-2972, doi: 10.1002/2015JD024413

Russotto, R.D., T. Storelvmo, and R.B. Smith (2013). Modeling aerosol activation in a tropical, orographic, island setting: Sensitivity tests and comparison with observations. Atmospheric Research, 134, 12-23, doi: 10.1016/j.atmosres.2013.07.017

Theses

Russotto, Rick (2018). Responses of the Climate System to Opposing Solar and CO₂ Forcings. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. PDF

Russotto, Rick (2015). The Effects of Ice Crystal Shape on the Evolution of Optically Thin Cirrus Clouds in the Tropics. Master's thesis, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA. PDF

Russotto, Rick (2012). Microphysical Modeling of Cloud Droplet Activation over Dominica. Senior thesis, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. PDF