Ronnie Abolafia-Rosenzweig
(Associate Research Scientist)
| Email: | ronnie.abolafia-rosenzweig@nasa.gov |
| Org Code: | |
| Address: |
NASA/GSFC Mail Code 617 Greenbelt, MD 20771 |
| Employer: | UNIV OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK |
Research Interests
Land surface modeling of terrestrial water and energy budgets
Modeling and observing land use and land cover change, including agricultural and post-fire hydrology
Land–atmosphere interactions
Predictability of extreme events on sub-seasonal to seasonal timescales using statistical and physically based models
Snow hydrology and snow–albedo feedbacks
Current Projects
Integrated Modeling Virtual Institute (IMVI)
https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/imvi/
Positions/Employment
Associate Research Scientist
University of Maryland Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center - ESSIC & NASA Goddard Space Flight Center - Greenbelt, Maryland
May 2026 - Present
Project Scientist
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) - Boulder, Colorado
October 2022 - May 2026
Postdoctoral Research Scientist
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) - Boulder, Colorado
December 2020 - October 2022
Doctoral Research Assistant
University of Colorado Boulder & Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science (CIRES) - Boulder, Colorado
August 2017 - December 2020
Technical Expert
RTI International - Remote
June 2019 - July 2020
Education
Ph.D. Civil, Environmental & Architectural Engineering (Computational Hydrology)
University of Colorado Boulder, 2020
B.S. Civil Engineering
Texas A&M University, 2016, Summa Cum Laude
Professional Societies
American Meteorological Society
Water Resources Committee Member
2026 - Present
American Geophysical Union
Member
2018 - 2026
Publications
Refereed
2026. "A 4-km long-term (1952–2025) daily hydrometeorological dataset for the western United States.", Scientific Data, [10.1038/s41597-026-07642-0] [Journal Article/Letter]
2026. "Extending MPAS‐NoahMP Model System Capability Beyond Weather Timescales: Evaluation of Hydroclimate and Land‐Atmosphere Interactions.", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 131 (11): e2025JD045334 [10.1029/2025jd045334] [Journal Article/Letter]
2026. "Revisiting Snow Water Equivalent Bias in the Noah‐MP Land Surface Model in the Western U.S.", Water Resources Research, 62 (6): e2025WR042586 [10.1029/2025wr042586] [Journal Article/Letter]
2026. "Soil Organic Matter Reduces Persistent Nighttime Surface Warm Bias in Convection‐Permitting U.S. Simulations.", Geophysical Research Letters, 53 (11): e2026GL123274 [10.1029/2026gl123274] [Journal Article/Letter]
2026. "The UCAR Africa Initiative: Recent Insights, Challenges, and Opportunities to Foster Collaborative Research for Environmental Sustainability.", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 107 (3): E718-E741 [10.1175/bams-d-24-0118.1] [Journal Article/Letter]
2025. "Machine learning insights for fire impacts on snow disappearance predictability in Northern California.", Machine Learning: Earth, 2 (1): 01LT01 [10.1088/3049-4753/ae2a36] [Journal Article/Letter]
2025. "Moisture from US Corn Belt fuels more intense convective storms.", Communications Earth & Environment, 7 (1): 70 [10.1038/s43247-025-03089-0] [Journal Article/Letter]
2025. "Emissions from burned structures in wildfires as significant yet unaccounted sources of US air pollution.", Nature Communications, 16 (1): 11443 [10.1038/s41467-025-66292-9] [Journal Article/Letter]
2025. "Snow Cover Plays a Non‐Dominant Role in WRF/Noah‐MP Simulated Surface Air Temperature Cold Biases Over the Western U.S.", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 130 (22): e2025JD044191 [10.1029/2025jd044191] [Journal Article/Letter]
2025. "Improved Cross‐Scale Snow Cover Simulations by Developing a Scale‐Aware Ground Snow Cover Fraction Parameterization in the Noah‐MP Land Surface Model.", Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 17 (6): e2024MS004704 [10.1029/2024ms004704] [Journal Article/Letter]
2025. "Benchmarking and evaluating the NASA Land Information System (version 7.5.2) coupled with the refactored Noah-MP land surface model (version 5.0).", , [10.5194/egusphere-2024-4176] [Journal Article/Letter]
2025. "Improved Snow Albedo Evolution in Noah-MP Land Surface Model Coupled with a Physical Snowpack Radiative Transfer Scheme.", Journal of Hydrometeorology, 26 (2): 185-200 [10.1175/jhm-d-24-0082.1] [Journal Article/Letter]
2024. "Quantifying the Impacts of Fire‐Related Perturbations in WRF‐Hydro Terrestrial Water Budget Simulations in California's Feather River Basin.", Hydrological Processes, 38 (11): e15314 [10.1002/hyp.15314] [Journal Article/Letter]
2024. "Evaluating Noah‐MP Simulated Runoff and Snowpack in Heavily Burned Pacific‐Northwest Snow‐Dominated Catchments.", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129 (9): e2023JD039780 [10.1029/2023jd039780] [Journal Article/Letter]
2024. "Evaluating and Enhancing Snow Compaction Process in the Noah‐MP Land Surface Model.", Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 16 (2): e2023MS003869 [10.1029/2023ms003869] [Journal Article/Letter]
2023. "Enhancing the community Noah-MP land model capabilities for earth sciences and applications.", Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 104 (11): E2023-E2029 [10.1175/bams-d-23-0249.1] [Journal Article/Letter]
2023. "CONUS404: The NCAR–USGS 4-km Long-Term Regional Hydroclimate Reanalysis over the CONUS.", Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 104 (8): E1382-E1408 [10.1175/bams-d-21-0326.1] [Journal Article/Letter]
2023. "Is It Possible to Quantify Irrigation Water‐Use by Assimilating a High‐Resolution Satellite Soil Moisture Product?.", Water Resources Research, 59 (4): [10.1029/2022wr033342] [Journal Article/Letter]
2023. "Quantifying the Impacts of High‐Resolution Urban Information on the Urban Thermal Environment.", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 128 (6): e2022JD038048 [10.1029/2022jd038048] [Journal Article/Letter]
2023. "High Resolution Forecasting of Summer Drought in the Western United States.", Water Resources Research, 59 (3): e2022WR033734 [10.1029/2022wr033734] [Journal Article/Letter]
2022. "Evaluation and Optimization of Snow Albedo Scheme in Noah‐MP Land Surface Model Using In Situ Spectral Observations in the Colorado Rockies.", Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 14 (10): e2022MS003141 [10.1029/2022ms003141] [Journal Article/Letter]
2022. "Winter and spring climate explains a large portion of interannual variability and trend in western U.S. summer fire burned area.", Environmental Research Letters, 17 (5): 054030 [10.1088/1748-9326/ac6886] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "Water Budget Closure in the Upper Chao Phraya River Basin, Thailand Using Multisource Data.", Remote Sensing, 14 (1): 173 [10.3390/rs14010173] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "What Causes the Unobserved Early‐Spring Snowpack Ablation in Convection‐Permitting WRF Modeling Over Utah Mountains?.", Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126 (22): e2021JD035284 [10.1029/2021jd035284] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "Implementation and Evaluation of a Unified Turbulence Parameterization Throughout the Canopy and Roughness Sublayer in Noah‐MP Snow Simulations.", Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 13 (11): e2021MS002665 [10.1029/2021ms002665] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "Remotely sensed ensembles of the terrestrial water budget over major global river basins: An assessment of three closure techniques.", Remote Sensing of Environment, 252 112191 [10.1016/j.rse.2020.112191] [Journal Article/Letter]
2021. "Evaluation of SMAP/Sentinel 1 High-Resolution Soil Moisture Data to Detect Irrigation Over Agricultural Domain.", IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 14 10733-10747 [10.1109/jstars.2021.3119228] [Journal Article/Letter]
2020. "A continental-scale soil evaporation dataset derived from Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite drying rates.", Scientific Data, 7 (1): 406 [10.1038/s41597-020-00748-z] [Journal Article/Letter]
2019. "Soil moisture data assimilation to estimate irrigation water use.", Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 2019MS001797 [10.1029/2019ms001797] [Journal Article/Letter]
2018. "Estimating Soil Evaporation Using Drying Rates Determined from Satellite-Based Soil Moisture Records.", Remote Sensing, 10 (12): 1945 [Journal Article/Letter]
Non-Refereed
2022. "For Western Wildfires, the Immediate Past Is Prologue.", Eos, 103 [10.1029/2022eo220319] [Journal Article/Letter]