Dr. Stefan Rahimi

Dr. Rahimi is passionate about (i) producing high-quality and decision-relevant regional projections of natural disaster risk using high-performance computing techniques, (ii) severe deep convection, and (iii) synoptic-dynamic meteorology. 

Stefan earned his Master's from the University of Oklahoma in 2014, where he worked to improve the accuracy of trajectories around an ultra-high-resolution (30-meter grid length) supercell thunderstorm. In his Ph.D. research, Dr. Rahimi explored the direct, semi-direct, and snow-darkening climate effects of light-absorbing Black Carbon and Dust aerosols across the Western U.S. and Southern Asia using an array of regional and global earth system models (RESMs and ESMs). From 2019-2023, Stefan worked to dynamically downscale nearly 9 ESMs from the 6th Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) using a RESM, and some of these projections are being used in California's Fifth Climate Change Assessment as well as the University of Wyoming-led effort to develop regionalized climate projections across the State of Wyoming.

In addition to his professorship at the University of Wyoming, Stefan has an appointment at UCLA's Center for Climate Science where he is working with Dr. Alex Hall on a variety of research topics including best practices in dynamical downscaling, exploring shifts in new weather extremes that may emerge in a warmer climate, and projection expansion through the use of artificial intelligence.

Check out the Fifth National Climate Assessment here!