Altaf Arain

M. Altaf Arain is a professor in the School of Earth, Environment & Society at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and Science Research Chair in Environmental Sustainability and Climate Change. His research interests include hydrometeorology, ecosystem restoration, land surface-atmosphere interaction schemes, eco-hydrological and global climate models. Dr. Arain established the Turkey Point Environmental Observatory, part of Global Water Futures (GWF) and global Fluxnet and Ameriflux programs. His research uses interdisciplinary techniques, including ground-based (e.g., eddy covariance, soil CO2 efflux, sapflow, biometric) and airborne (e.g., drone and satellite remote sensing) measurements, as well as ecosystem and hydrologic models. Dr. Arain focuses on developing integrated biogeochemical and hydrologic modeling systems and land surface models used in Canadian regional and global climate models to improve their predictive capabilities. His group developed the integrated regional terrestrial ecosystem and hydrologic model (MESH-CLASSIC) for catchment-scale studies. As part of the Canadian SSHRC and US NSF funded project “Global Centre for Climate Change and Transnational Waters,” Dr. Arain is implementing MESH-CLASSIC for integrated water, carbon, and nutrient (nitrogen) cycling studies in the Great Lakes region. Dr. Arain was involved in the Canadian FloodNet project to study impacts of extreme weather events on watersheds in eastern Canada. Under the GWF program, he explored the impacts of climate change and extreme events on water resources of the Six Nations of Grand River. Dr. Arain has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal papers and is listed among Clarivate Analytics-Web of Science top 1% Highly-Cited Researchers in science and social science.