Dr. Altaf Arain

Dr. Arain is a professor in the School of Geography and Earth Science at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is also the Director of the McMaster Centre for Climate Change. He is also associate member of the McMaster Department of Civil Engineering and United Nations University. He was the president of the Canadian Geophysical Union (CGU) – Biogeosciences Section from 2009-2012. He graduated from the Department of Hydrology and Water Resources, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA. He has expertise in both micrometeorological measurements and land-surface atmosphere interaction modeling.

Dr. Arain initiated Turkey Point Flux Station to study water, carbon and energy fluxes in an age-sequence of pine forests (planted in 1939, 1974 and 2002) and a deciduous (established in 1930s) forest near Lake Erie in southern Ontario, Canada. Turkey Point Flux Station has been part of current and past major national and international networks such as global Fluxnet, Ameriflux, North American Carbon Program and Fluxnet-Canada. He developed the carbon and nitrogen coupled Canadian Land Surface Scheme (CN-CLASS) and nitrogen modules for the Canadian Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (CTEM-N+). CN-CLASS model development work was part of a multi-university collaborative modeling initiative known as the Canadian Global Coupled Carbon Climate Model, (CGC3M)) to develop a global coupled carbon climate model.

Dr. Arain has been involved in interdisciplinary research initiatives to measure nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants and to investigate the effects of air pollution on human health in several urban areas of Canada. Meteorological and nitrogen dioxide data helped to improve land use regression models for health studies in urban settings.

He has published more than 95 refereed journal papers that can be viewed here.