Abigail Lute Ph.D.

  • Research Scientist
Abby Lute

I study climate impacts at local to global scales with a focus on hydrological impacts. I support the Risk team’s municipal risk assessments, assisting with downscaling large-scale climate models to make climate predictions at a local scale.

I also run a hydrological model to answer questions such as “how will water scarcity risk change in the coming decades?” and “how will changes in streamflow on the Rhine River impact shipping under various climate scenarios between now and 2050?” Using the climate model emulator FaIR, I am investigating how changes in emissions will affect global temperature.

During my Ph.D., I worked with temperature data to reduce the uncertainty in environmental and climate models, which is essential to accurate climate science. I also developed a snow and climate dataset for the western U.S. (SnowClim) that provides some of the highest-resolution climate data currently available for the entire region. The data depicts pre-industrial, present day, and future climate and snow scenarios.

I spent three years in New Zealand during my undergraduate studies. While there, I spent most weekends backpacking, which is when I fell in love with mountain environments and wanted to better understand them. My research on snow and glaciers made it clear to me what we have already lost—and how much more we stand to lose—as a result of climate change, inspiring me to apply my skills directly to combating the issue.

Projects

Above: Projected flood risk for Decorah, Iowa. / map by Carl Churchill

Woodwell & Wellington

Collaborating to integrate climate risk into financial decision making

Selected Publications

SnowClim v1.0: high-resolution snow model and data for the western United States

Lute, A.C., J. Abatzoglou, & T. Link (2022). Geoscientific Model Development.

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Best practices for estimating near-surface air temperature lapse rates

Lute, A.C., & J. Abatzoglou (2020). International Journal of Climatology.

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Projected changes in snowfall extremes and interannual variability of snowfall in the western United States

Lute, A.C., J.T. Abatzoglou, & K.C. Hegewisch (2015). Water Resources Research.

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