picture: amidst the Pocono Mountains

Tyler Ruff

I grew up near Baltimore, MD, went to Penn State and graduated with a B.S. in Meteorology and a minor in Geography, during which I lived in and helped manage State College's only housing co-op (Central Pennsylvania Community Housing). In the summer of 2008 I lived in Manhattan for an internship at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University with my advisors Dr. Yochanan Kushnir and Dr. Richard Seager. During the fall semester of the same year, I studied abroad at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. I continued my work at Lamont over the summer of 2009.

Currently, I'm a graduate student in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA, and my advisor is Dr. J. David Neelin. In my free time, I enjoy playing jazz/rock guitar, practicing photography, and following the professional e-sport of StarCraft and StarCraft 2.

Academics

Research

- UCLA '10-'11: My research project with Dr. David Neelin involves studying the existence of non-Gaussian (roughly exponential) tails in probability density functions of temperature observations. For background information, related studies (e.g., Neelin et al. 2010, Geophys. Res. Lett.) have explored similar occurences of long tails in water vapor distributions as well as those of chemical tracers. I am also working on diagnosing barotropic contributions to ENSO tropical teleconnections using the Quasi-equilibrium Tropical Circulation Model (QTCM; Neelin and Zeng 2000).

- Summer Internship '08 and '09: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Division of Ocean and Climate Physics, Climate Modeling Group
My research with Drs. Yochanan Kushnir and Richard Seager began with using graphical and statistical methods in order to quantify the future impact of internal climate variability, specifically with respect to the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, over the western United States and the Colorado River headwater region. The bulk of my research involved studying the spatial and temporal modes of precipitation variability over the western United States using principal component and wavelet analysis. Click to view the presentation poster (PDF format).

- Summer Internship '06 and '07: Precipitation and Water Cycle Data
My internship at CREW (The Center for Research on Environment and Water) in Calverton, MD consisted of developing a near real-time, automated water-cycle diagnostic tool that would make a number of critical global observations, analyses, and forecasts of water cycling available in an easily interpreted and highly informative graphical format with my mentor Dr. Paul Houser. The website has since succumbed to changes in data set availability but is still online.

Publications

Ruff, T. W., Y. Kushnir, and R. Seager: Unchanging spatial patterns of interannual precipitation variability over North America under global warming. J. Hydrometeor., in revision as of Feb. 2011.

Ruff, T. W. and J. D. Neelin: Long tails in regional surface temperature probability distributions with implications for extremes under global warming. Geophys. Res. Lett., in prep. for submission as of Feb. 2011.

UCLA Classes

(Winter '10):
- AOS C115/228 - Mesoscale Meteorology
- AOS 281 - Advanced Statistics for Physical Sciences
- AOS General Seminar, Atmospheric Dynamics Seminar, Research & Discussion
(Fall '10):
- AOS 211 - Planetary Wave Dynamics
- AOS General Seminar, Atmospheric Dynamics Seminar, Research & Discussion, TA Prep. Course
(Spring '10):
- AOS 202 - Introduction to Ocean Science
- AOS General Seminar, Atmospheric Dynamics Seminar, Research & Discussion, Directed Studies
(Winter '10):
- AOS 201A - Geophysical Fluid Dynamics I
- AOS 203B - Introduction to Atmospheric Physics
- AOS C205A - Solar System Plasmas
- AOS General Seminar
(Fall '09):
- AOS 200A - Introduction to Fluid Dynamics
- AOS 200B - Introduction to Dynamics of Earth Systems
- AOS 203A - Introduction to Atmospheric Chemistry
- AOS General Seminar

Penn State Classes

Interesting or Helpful Meteorology Links

- Penn State's e-WALL - Very useful resource for visualizing a plethora of synoptic meteorology data.
- Current High-Resolution Surface Analysis of North America - Done by NOAA, this is a direct link to the most current, detailed, and accurate surface analysis map for North America.
- The National Corporation for Atmospheric Research - Easily viewable resource for surface/upper air observations, radar, etc. Like my professor Kristen Corbosiero said, "It's the Wal-Mart of weather data."
- 4WX Weather Calculators - Extremely quick and easy computation of many weather variables, so as to not have to use long equations or Skew-Ts. Especially excellent for checking homework results.
- Italian National Resource Council Links - Lists the websites of basically every department and organization involving meteorology in the world.
- Dept. of Atmos. Sciences at U. Utah Department Links - Most comprehensive list of links related to weather for the United States and Canada.
- The Ultimate Weather Education Site - An extremely comprehensive guide to basically everything an operational meteorologist should know.
- Graphical Climatology of Downtown Los Angeles - Very cool charts of annual temperature and rainfall for LA from 1921 to the present.

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