Contact Information
Biography
Ryan L. Sriver is an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Ilinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining UIUC in 2012, he worked as a research associate in Penn State's Department of Geosciences and as a NOAA Climate and Global Change postdoctoral fellow in Penn State's Department of Meteorology. Ryan graduated from Purdue University with a PhD in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
Ryan's research seeks to develop a deeper understanding about the physical processes influencing variability within Earth's climate system and to quantify relevant uncertainties surrounding future climate projections. His work combines observational products, statistical methods and tools, and numerical models spanning a wide range of complexities and scales to understand how extreme weather and climate events are changing with global warming, what are the physical drivers, and what are the implications for natural and human systems.
His research interests include: Climate Dynamics, Earth System Modeling, Ocean-Atmosphere Interactions, Uncertainty and Risk, Weather and Climate Extremes, Tropical Cyclones, Sea-Level Rise, Seasonal Prediction, and Multi-Sector Dynamics.
Education
- Ph.D. Earth and Atmospheric Science, Purdue University, 2008
- M.S. Physics, Purdue University, 2003
- B.S. Physics, Purdue University, 2001
Courses Taught
- ATMS 140: Climate and Global Change
- ATMS 302: Atmospheric Dynamics I
- ATMS 404: Risk Analysis in the Earth Sciences
- ATMS 491: General Circulation of the Atmosphere and Ocean
- ATMS 491: Physical Oceanography
- ATMS 500: Dynamic Meteorology
- ATMS 507: Climate Dynamics
- ATMS 526: Risk Analysis in the Geosciences
- ATMS 571: Professional Development
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, Climate, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
External Links
Recent Publications
Avila, T. C., Lafferty, D. C., Stover, M., Guerrero, S., Samantula, C., Wing, I. S., & Sriver, R. L. (2025). Downscaled CMIP5 projections of physical fire risk understate historical trends. Environmental Research Letters, 20(8), Article 084025. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ade892
Kircher, K., Proistosescu, C., & Sriver, R. L. (2025). Analytical Model for the Higher Order Moments of Midlatitude Atmospheric Temperature Distributions. Geophysical Research Letters, 52(3), Article e2024GL111626. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL111626
Lafferty, D. C., Grogan, D. S., Zuidema, S., Haqiqi, I., Alipour, A., Keller, K., & Sriver, R. L. (2025). Combined Meteorological and Hydrologic Uncertainties Shape Projections of Future Soil Moisture in the Eastern United States. Earth's Future, 13(8), Article e2025EF006040. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006040
Harris, T., Li, B., & Sriver, R. (2023). MULTIMODEL ENSEMBLE ANALYSIS WITH NEURAL NETWORK GAUSSIAN PROCESSES. Annals of Applied Statistics, 17(4), 3403-3425. https://doi.org/10.1214/23-AOAS1768
Lafferty, D. C., & Sriver, R. L. (2023). Downscaling and bias-correction contribute considerable uncertainty to local climate projections in CMIP6. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 6(1), Article 158. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-023-00486-0