Daniel A Bishop
Climate Scientist, PhD
Climate Risk Assessment - Hydroclimatology - Global Change - Climate Impacts

About





I am a PhD-level Climate Scientist and Climate Resilience Consultant with a passion for data analytics, problem solving, and risk assessment. My primary research interests span natural hazard risk assessment, climate dynamics, paleoclimate, meteorology, and forest ecology. From this diverse research background, I have experience working with observational climate and global climate model data, hydrologic models, catastrophe models and tree-ring proxy models of precipitation and soil moisture. My research aims to improve societal decision-making and preparedness in response to natural hazards through our understanding of climate change.

For more, see Research.



Technical Skills

  • Matlab
  • R
  • Python
  • Jupyter
  • ArcGIS
  • LaTeX
  • git
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Interests

  • Climate Impacts
  • Hydroclimate
  • Meteorology
  • Remote sensing
  • Global change
  • Paleoclimatology
  • Data Analytics
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Education


Awards

  • NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow, 2017-2020
  • Columbia University Dean's Fellow, 2016
  • Northeastern States Research Cooperative Graduate Research Grant, 2013
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Prior Academic Research





Eastern US Hydroclimate

Over the past century, fall-season precipitation has increased by nearly 40% in the southeastern United States, outpacing seasonal hydroclimatic change across all regions in North America. In addition, the wet east - dry west aridity gradient over the continental US has intensified during the late-20th century. My work seeks to identify the climatic and meteorological mechanisms that have generated these changes and evaluate the potential for these trends to continue into the future. To accomplish this, I incorporate instrumental observations, reanalyses, model simulations, hydrologic models, and tree-ring proxy data to investigate the character of regional hydroclimatic trends and the methods of seasonal and sub-seasonal moisture delivery into the region, explore dynamic connections to large-scale atmospheric circulation and moisture availability, assess the degree to which model simulations can replicate observed change, decompose the effects of climatic trends on moisture availability, and contextualize observed changes over the last millenium. This research will identify the dynamical foundations of century long hydroclimatic trends in the continental US, evaluate the role of anthropogenic and natural climate variability contributions in a changing climate, and improve our understanding of climatic processes impacting water resources that will influence tens of millions of people across the US.

See: Bishop et al. 2019a,b



Ecosystem Impacts

Understanding the impacts of human activity and climate variability is paramount to accurately predict change in climate-sensitive ecosystems. In prior work, I have investigated the impacts of changes in environmental stressors in terrestrial ecosystems. These projects assessed the drivers of regional growth decline of Adirondack sugar maple populations and mapped data uncertainty in regional climate products in the northeastern United States to better understand local and regional climate change. This knowledge helps improve our ability to predict ecosystem responses, assess vulnerabilities, and devise effective adaptation strategies.

See: Bishop et al. 2015, Bishop and Beier 2013





Tree Rings and Climate

How can tree rings improve our understanding of regional climate change? Tree rings provide a sub-seasonal to annual proxy of climate information over long timescales, which allows us to extend the observational record back in time. This allows us to evaluate the nature and impact of decadal-to-centennial low-frequency climate variability and trends. My research has primarily used this tool to evaluate seasonal and extreme hydroclimate across the eastern United States. In past work, I found that the 2001-2020 North American wet east - dry west aridity gradient was the strongest in at least 600 years.

See: Bishop et al. 2021, Bishop and Pederson 2015

Selected Talks and Posters


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Publications


Lead Author

22. Bishop DA, Williams AP, Seager R, Cook ER, Peteet DM, Cook BI, Rao MP, Stahle DW. 2021. Placing the east-west North American aridity gradient in a multi-century context. Environmental Research Letters.

21. Bishop DA, Williams AP, Seager R. 2019b. Increased fall precipitation in the southeastern US driven by higher‐intensity, frontal precipitation. Geophysical Research Letters.
Media Coverage: AGU, Phys.org

20. Bishop DA, Williams AP, Seager R, Fiore AM, Cook BI, Mankin JS, Singh D, Smerdon JE, Rao MP. 2019a. Investigating the causes of increased twentieth-century fall precipitation over the southeastern United States. Journal of Climate.

19. Bishop DA, Beier CM, Pederson N, Lawrence GB, Stella JC, Sullivan TJ. 2015. Regional growth decline of sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and potential causes. Ecosphere.
Media Coverage: WAMC Northeast Public Radio, Inside Science, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Albany Times Union, Syracuse Post-Standard, Modern Farmer, & more!

18. Bishop DA, Pederson N. 2015. Regional variation of transient precipitation and rainless-day frequency across a subcontinental hydroclimate gradient. Journal of Extreme Events.

17. Bishop DA, Beier CM. 2013. Assessing uncertainty in high-resolution spatial climate data across the US Northeast. PLoS ONE.


Co-Author

16. Bolles K, Williams AP, Cook ER, Cook BI, Bishop DA. 2021. Tree-ring reconstruction of the atmospheric ridging feature that causes flash drought in the central United States since 1500. Geophysical Research Letters.

15. Rao MP, Cook ER, Cook BI, D’Arrigo RD, Palmer JG, Lall U, Woodhouse CA, Buckley BM, Uriarte M, Bishop DA, Jian J, Webster PJ. 2020. Seven centuries of reconstructed Brahmaputra River discharge demonstrate underestimated high discharge and flood hazard frequency. Nature Communications.

14. Pederson N, Leland C, Bishop DA, Pearl JK, Anchukaitis KJ, Mandra T, Hopton-Ahmed M, Martin-Benito D. 2020. A framework for determining population-level vulnerability to climate: evidence for growth hysteresis in Chamaecyparis thyoides along its contiguous latitudinal distribution. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change.

13. Dannenberg MP, Song C, Wise EK, Pederson N, Bishop DA. 2020. Delineating environmental stresses to primary production of U.S. forests from tree rings: Effects of climate seasonality, soil, and topography. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.

12. Williams AP, Abatzoglou JT, Gershunov A, Guzman‐Morales J, Bishop DA, Balch JK, Lettenmaier DP. 2019. Observed impacts of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire in California. Earth's Future.
Media Coverage: The Atlantic, CNN, CBS News, Washington Post, Inside Science, & more!

11. Alexander MR, Pearl JK, Bishop DA, Cook ER, Anchukaitis KJ, Pederson N. 2019. The potential to strengthen temperature reconstructions in ecoregions with limited tree line using a multispecies approach. Quaternary Research.

10. Dye A, Alexander MR, Bishop DA, Druckenbrod D, Pederson N, Hessl A. 2019. Size-growth asymmetry is not consistently related to productivity across an eastern US temperate forest network. Oecologia.

9. Trotsiuk V, Pederson N, Druckenbrod DL, Orwig DA, Bishop DA, Barker-Plotkin A, Fraver S, Martin-Benito D. 2018. Testing the efficacy of tree-ring methods for detecting past disturbances. Forest Ecology and Management.

8. D’Orangeville L, Maxwell J, Kneeshaw D, Pederson N, Duchesne L, Logan T, Houle D, Arseneault D, Bishop DA, Beier CM, Druckenbrod D, Fraver S, Girard F, Halman J, Hansen C, Hart JL, Hartmann H, Kaye M, Leblanc D, Manzoni S, Rayback S, Rollinson C, Phillips RP. 2018. Drought timing and local climate determine the sensitivity of eastern temperate forests to drought. Global Change Biology.

7. Leland C, Cook ER, Andreu-Hayles L, Pederson N, Hessl A, Anchukaitis A, Byambasuren O, Baatarbileg N, Davi N, D’Arrigo R, Bishop DA, Rao MP. 2018. Strip-bark morphology and radial growth trends in ancient Pinus sibirica trees from central Mongolia. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.

6. Williams AP, Cook BI, Smerdon JE, Bishop DA, Seager R, Mankin JS. 2017. The 2016 southeastern US drought: an extreme departure from centennial wetting and cooling. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

5. Montane F, Fox AM, Arellano AF, MacBean N, Alexander MR, Dye A, Bishop DA, Trouet V, Babst F, Hessl AE, Pederson N, Blanken PD, Bohrer G, Gough CM, Litvak ME, Novick KA, Phillips RP, Wood JD, Moore DJP. 2017. Evaluating the effect of alternative carbon allocation schemes in a land surface model on carbon fluxes, pools and turnover in temperate forests. Geoscientific Model Development.

4. Rollinson CR, Liu Y, Raiho A, Moore DJ, McLachlan J, Bishop DA, Dye A, Matthes JH, Hessl A, Hickler T, Pederson N, Poulter B, Quaife T, Schaefer K, Steinkamp J, Dietze MC. 2017. Emergent climate and CO2 sensitivities of net primary productivity in ecosystem models do not agree with empirical data. Global Change Biology.

3. Dye A, Barker-Plotkin A, Bishop DA, Pederson N, Poulter B, Hessl AE. 2016. Comparing tree-ring and permanent plot estimates of aboveground net primary production in three eastern U.S. forests. Ecosphere.

2. Tipton J, Hooten MB, Tingley M, Pederson N, Bishop DA. 2016. Reconstruction of late Holocene climate based on tree growth and mechanistic hierarchical models. Environmetrics.

1. Sullivan TJ, Lawrence GB, Bailey SW, McDonnell TC, Beier CM, Weathers KC, McPherson GT, Bishop DA. 2013. Effects of acidic deposition and soil acidification on sugar maple trees in the Adirondack Mountains, New York. Environmental Science and Technology.

Résumé

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