Alex Hall
· Director, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; Professor, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences; Faculty Director, Sustainable LA Grand ChallengeUniversity of California, Los Angeles · Environmental Science and Policy
Active 1881–2026
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About
Alex Hall is the Director of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and the Faculty Director of UCLA’s Sustainable LA Grand Challenge. His research focuses on reducing climate change uncertainty at both regional and global scales. He has advanced the development of downscaling techniques to better understand climate change impacts at scales most relevant to people and ecosystems, applying these methods to create neighborhood-scale projections of future climate. His work includes recent studies on extreme precipitation and wildfire risk in California, and he has served as a Lead Author for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report and as a Contributing Author for its chapter on climate model evaluation. Hall's contributions to climate science have earned him several accolades, including the AGU Atmospheric Sciences Ascent Award in 2016 and the AGU Future Horizons in Climate Science: Turco Lectureship in 2019.
Research topics
- Geography
- Geology
- Climatology
- Environmental science
- Oceanography
- Meteorology
- Political Science
- Computer Science
- Atmospheric sciences
- Ecology
Selected publications
Responses and impacts of atmospheric rivers to climate change
Nature Reviews Earth & Environment · 2020 · 399 citations
Constraining the increased frequency of global precipitation extremes under warming
Nature Climate Change · 2022 · 270 citations
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · 2020 · 211 citations
ABSTRACT Regional climate modeling addresses our need to understand and simulate climatic processes and phenomena unresolved in global models. This paper highlights examples of current approaches to and innovative uses of regional climate modeling that deepen understanding of the climate system. High-resolution models are generally more skillful in simulating extremes, such as heavy precipitation, strong winds, and severe storms. In addition, research has shown that fine-scale features such as m…
The season for large fires in Southern California is projected to lengthen in a changing climate
Communications Earth & Environment · 2022 · 77 citations
Abstract Southern California is a biodiversity hotspot and home to over 23 million people. Over recent decades the annual wildfire area in the coastal southern California region has not significantly changed. Yet how fire regime will respond to future anthropogenic climate change remains an important question. Here, we estimate wildfire probability in southern California at station scale and daily resolution using random forest algorithms and downscaled earth system model simulations. We project…
An Evaluation of Dynamical Downscaling Methods Used to Project Regional Climate Change
Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres · 2024-12-11 · 18 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingAbstract In the past decade, dynamical downscaling using “pseudo‐global‐warming” (PGW) techniques has been applied frequently to project regional climate change. Such techniques generate signals by adding mean global climate model (GCM)‐simulated climate change signals in temperature, moisture, and circulation to lateral and surface boundary conditions derived from reanalysis. An alternative to PGW is to downscale GCM data directly. This technique should be advantageous, especially for simulatio…
Recent grants
Collaborative Research: Do Microenvironments Govern Macroecology?
NSF · $359k · 2011–2016
Understanding and Constraining Future Arctic Climate Change
NSF · $342k · 2007–2011
Using Emergent Constraints to Reduce Uncertainty in Regional Climate Change
NSF · $900k · 2023–2027
Frequent coauthors
- 123 shared
Stefan Rahimi
University of California, Los Angeles
- 121 shared
Naomi Goldenson
- 105 shared
Will Krantz
University of California, Los Angeles
- 103 shared
L. Ruby Leung
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
- 102 shared
David W. Pierce
- 102 shared
Paul Ullrich
- 101 shared
Isla R. Simpson
Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory
- 101 shared
Linda O. Mearns
NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research
Education
- 2000
Ph.D., Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles
- 1995
M.S., Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles
- 1993
B.S., Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
University of California, Los Angeles
Awards & honors
- American Geophysical Union (AGU) Atmospheric Sciences Ascent…
- AGU’s Future Horizons in Climate Science: Turco Lectureship…
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