Contact Information
1301 West Green Street
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Dr. Atul Jain’s research focuses on climate interactions with the land physical (hydrology and energy), biological processes (carbon and nitrogen), and the land use/cover changes (LULCC), including agricultural intensification, and how these interactions affect surface processes that exchange energy, water, and major GHGs between surface and the atmosphere, and contribute to climate change and variability. To conduct this research, Dr. Jain and his students and other lab members have developed and applied a global model-data integration framework, ISAM, in combination with satellite and ground-based observation data at regional and global scales.
Dr. Jain has won numerous awards and honors, including the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Award. He has served as a lead and contributing author for major assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is the author of over 175 scientific articles, including highly cited articles in Nature and Science. Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters) has listed Dr Jain as one of the "Most Highly Cited” Researchers, and Reuters has listed him as one of the “World’s Top Climate Scientists”.
Research Interests
- Climate-carbon cycle interactions
- Impacts of changes in land cover and land management on climate
- Climate impact on agriculture and food supply
- Climate change in arctic and boreal ecosystems
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N2O and CH4 emissions from terrestrial ecosystems
Research Description
Some recent research challenges on which my research lab members have focused on include (1) the impact of LULCC on biogeophysics (water, energy) and biogeochemistry (carbon and nitrogen), (2) climatic effect on permafrost soil carbon storage, (3) CH4 and N2O emissions from wetland and dryland, (4) synergistic effects of environmental ([CO2] and climate), management (irrigation and nitrogen input), and extreme climate events on agricultural crop production, and (5) spatially explicit production- and consumption-based GHG emissions worldwide from the plant- and animal-based human food.
Education
Ph.D. Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology
Courses Taught
- ATMS140: Climate and Global Change
- ENVS 301: Environmental Issues Today
- ATMS 307: Climate Processes
- ATMS 323/ENSU 302: Air Pollution to Global Change
- ATMS/CEE 445: Atmospheric Dispersion Modeling
- ATMS 491: Integrated Assessment of Climate Change
- ATMS 447: Climate Change Assessment
- ATMS 449: Biogeochemical Cycles
- ATMS 571: Professional Development
- ATMS 591: Atmospheric Sciences Seminars
- ATMS 599 Thesis Research
Additional Campus Affiliations
- Faculty Affiliate, Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
- Faculty Affiliate, Illinois Informatics – Program Area: Spatial Informatics
External Links
News and Research Highlights
– Atul Jain is among the six Illinois scientists that rank among the world's most influential
– The annual Carbon Budget Project 2021 report found that global fossil carbon dioxide emissions in 2021 are set to rebound close to their pre-COVID-19 levels, says Illinois atmospheric sciences professor and report co-author Atul Jain. The report is published in the journal Earth System Science Data.
– A team led by University of Illinois professor Atul Jain has created a new data-modeling framework that provides researchers and policymakers with a database to estimate location-specific emissions for all greenhouse gases related to the plant- and animal-based human food industries. The study findings are published in the journal Nature Food One can follow all the news coverage of the article at the Alttmetric site
– Atul Jain and his graduate student Tzu-Shun Lin co-authored a paper published in the journal Nature Food that shows that climate change may affect the production of maize (corn) and wheat as early as 2030. NASA developed an excellent video highlighting this work
Access all other news and research highlights at professor Atul Jain's Research Group Website
Recent Publications
Gonsamo, A., Ciais, P., Miralles, D. G., Sitch, S., Dorigo, W., Lombardozzi, D., Friedlingstein, P., Nabel, J. E. M. S., Goll, D. S., O'Sullivan, M., Arneth, A., Anthoni, P., Jain, A. K., Wiltshire, A., Peylin, P., & Cescatti, A. (2021). Greening drylands despite warming consistent with carbon dioxide fertilization effect. Global change biology, 27(14), 3336-3349. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15658
Jägermey J, C Müller, AC Ruane, J Elliott, J Balkovic, O Castillo, B Faye, I Foster, C Folberth, JA Franke, K Fuchs, JR Guarin, J Heinke, G Hoogenboom, T Iizumi, AK Jain, …. C Rosenzweig (2021). Climate impacts on global agriculture emerge earlier in a new generation of climate and crop models, Nature Food, 2, 873–885. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00400-y
Lin, T.-S., Y Song, P Lawrence, HS Kheshgi, and AK Jain (2021), Worldwide Maize and Soybean Yield Response to Environmental and Management Factors over the 20th and 21st Centuries, Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeoscience, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JG006304
Songhan Wang, Y Zhang, W Ju, …, AK Jain, A Wiltshire, DS Goll16, J Peñuelas (2021), Response to Comments on “Recent global decline of CO2 fertilization effects on vegetation photosynthesis”, Science, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb7772
Winkler, A. J., Myneni, R. B., Hannart, A., Sitch, S., Haverd, V., Lombardozzi, D., Arora, V. K., Pongratz, J., Nabel, J. E. M. S., Goll, D. S., Kato, E., Tian, H., Arneth, A., Friedlingstein, P., Jain, A. K., Zaehle, S., & Brovkin, V. (2021). Slowdown of the greening trend in natural vegetation with further rise in atmospheric CO2. Biogeosciences, 18(17), 4985-5010. https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4985-2021
Xu, X, P Sharma, S Shu, TZ Lin, P Ciais, F Tubiello, P Smith, N Campbell and AK Jain (2021), Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Plant- and Animal-Based Food, Nature Food, 2, 723-732. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00358-x
View all publications on Google Scholar and on Web of Science
Download publications from professor Atul Jain's Research Group Website
