Dr. Atul Jain’s research focuses on understanding how interactions among the climate system alter the carbon cycle, and to provide useful projections of future changes in global carbon and resultant future climate change. While Dr. Jain’s research goal is to provide the required scientific understanding about how the components of Earth’s climate system interact, it is motivated by the practical and pressing issue of human-induced climate change. Dr. Jain and his students have made fundamental advances in our understanding of (1) the interactions between biogeophysical (hydrology and energy) and biogeochemical (carbon and nitrogen) processes at global scale; (2) the intractions between climate change and bioenergy and conventional food crops, and (3) the major land cover and land use change (LCLUC) activities using historical and future LCLUCs and effects of these changes on biogeophysical and biogeochemical processes. To conduct this research, Dr. Jain and his students have developed and applied global climate and land surface model, ISAM, in combination with satellite and ground-based observation data.

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 authors for major assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is the author of over 150 scientific articles, including highly cited articles in Nature and Science, most of which relate to global climate change as affected by both human activities and natural phenomena. He also directs a number of research projects that are primarily oriented towards improving our understanding of the impacts that man-made and natural trace gases may be having on the Earth’s climate.