Ismaila is an Earth System scientist whose research centers on predicting and understanding the physical relationship between natural climate variability, extreme weather events, and climate change within the coupled Earth system. He is currently an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU). He currently serves as an editor for the journal Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics. He received his BS degree in Physics and Chemistry and Ph.D degree in Climate and Climate Impacts from Cheikh Anta Diop University, Senegal. He has held Long-term visiting scientist, Postdoctoral fellow and Staff Research Associate positions at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) and University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) prior to joining the PSU in 2021. The primary goal of his research is to improve our understanding of monsoon systems and precipitation variability in a changing climate to improve predictability of hydroclimatological changes in response to anthropogenic warming, but also to environmental changes. He also conducts research on land surface – atmosphere coupling processes and hydrometeorological prediction, focusing on the impact of land-surface processes on the predictability of regional climate and global climate variability and anomalies, with a particular emphasis on monsoon systems, and the physical mechanism involved. His areas of active research include West Africa, Continental U. S., Central Africa, Pan-Africa, East Asia, and home in Senegal. To address his research questions, his work relies on theory, analysis of large-scale observational data as well as design and perform a suite of high-resolution numerical climate model simulations, from Regional Climate Models (e.g., WRF-ARW, WRF-NMM and RegCM) to Earth System Models (e.g., CFSv2 and CESM2).

Research Interests:

• Climate variability and change
• High-resolution climate modeling
• Climate Dynamics
• Land-atmosphere interactions
• Extreme weather/Climate events
• Regional Climate Downscaling
• Sub-seasonal to seasonal Prediction

Selected Research Contributions:

• Saha SK, Xue Y, Krishnakumar S, Diallo I, Shivamurthy Y, Nakamura T, Tang Q, Chaudhari HS. (2023) A dominant mode in the first phase of the Asian summer monsoon rainfall: role of antecedent remote land surface temperature. Climate Dynamics, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06709-7.
• Xue Y, Diallo I, Boone AA, Yao T, Zhang Y, Zeng X, Neelin JD, Lau WKM, Pan Y, Liu Y, Pan X, Tang Q, van Oevelen PJ, Sato T, Koo MS, Materia S, Shi C, Yang J, Ardilouze C, Lin Z, Qi X, Nakamura T, Saha SK, Senan R, Takaya Y, Wang H, Zhang H, Zhao M, Nayak HP, Chen Q, Feng J, Brunke MA and co-authors (2022) Spring Land Temperature in Tibetan Plateau and Global-Scale Summer Precipitation – Initialization and Improved Prediction. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society,103(12), E2756-E2767. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0270.1
• Diallo I, Xue Y, Chen Q, Ren X, Guo W. (2022) Effects of spring Tibetan Plateau land temperature anomalies on early summer floods/droughts over the monsoon regions of East Asia and South Asia. Climate Dynamics, 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-06053-8
• Anwar SA, Diallo I. (2022) Modelling the Tropical African Climate using a state-of-the-art coupled regional climate-vegetation model. Climate Dynamics 58(1), 97-113. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05892-9.
• Moihamette F, Pokam WM, Diallo I, Washington R.: Extreme Indian Ocean dipole and rainfall variability over Central Africa. International Journal of Climatology, 42(10), 5255-5272. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.7531
• Fotso-Nguemo TC, Vondou DA, Diallo I, Diedhiou A, Weber T, Nghonda JP, Yepdo ZD. (2022) Potential impact of 1.5, 2 and 3 °C global warming levels on heat and discomfort indices changes over Central Africa. Science of the Total Environment, 804, 150099. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150099
• Anwar SA, Diallo I. (2021) The influence of two land-surface hydrology schemes on the terrestrial carbon cycle of Africa: A regional climate model study. International Journal of Climatology 41(Suppl. 1): E1202-E1216. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.6762.
• Anwar SA, Diallo I. (2021) On the role of a coupled vegetation-runoff system in simulating the tropical African climate: a regional climate model sensitivity study. Theoretical and Applied Climatology 145: 313-325. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03627-8
• Anwar SA, Diallo I. (2021) A RCM investigation of the influence of vegetation status and runoff scheme on the summer Gross Primary Production in Africa. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 145: 1407-1420. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-021-03667-0
• Yu L, Xue Y, Diallo I. (2021) Vegetation greening in China and its effect on summer regional climate. Science Bulletin 66(1), 13-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scib.2020.09.003.
• Xue Y, Yao T, Boone AA, Diallo I, Liu Y. and co-authors (2021) Impact of Initialized Land Surface Temperature and Snowpack on Subseasonal to Seasonal Prediction Project, Phase I (LS4P-I): Organization and Experimental design. Geoscientific Model Development. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-14-1-2021.
• Dosio A, Jury M, Almazroui M, Ashfaq M, Diallo I, Engelbrecht F, Kluste NAB, Lennard C, Pinto I, Sylla MB, Tamoffo AT. (2021) Projected future daily characteristics of African precipitation based on global (CMIP5, CMIP6) and regional (CORDEX, CORDEX-CORE) climate models. Climate Dynamics 57, 3135-3158. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-021-05859-w.
• Almazroui M, Islam MN, Saeed F, Saeed S, Ismail M, Ehsan MA, Diallo I, O’Brien E, Ashfaq M, Martinez-Castro D, and co-authors (2021) Projected Changes in Temperature and Precipitation over the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean in CMIP6 GCMs. Earth Systems and Environment 5, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41748-021-00199-5
• Huang H, Xue Y, Chilikoti N, Liu Y, Chen G, Diallo I. (2020) Assessing global and regional effects of reconstructed land use and land cover change on climate since 1950 using a coupled land-atmosphere-ocean model. Journal of Climate 33(20), 8997-9013. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0108.1.
• Ashfaq M, Cavazos T, Reboita MS, Torres-Alavez JA, Im ES, Olusegun CF, Alves L, Key K, Adeniyi MO, Tall M, Sylla MB, Mehmood S, Zafar Q, Das S, Diallo I, Coppola E, Giorgi F. (2020) Robust late twenty-first century shift in the regional monsoons in RegCM-CORDEX simulations. Climate Dynamics, 1-26.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05306-2
• Kebe I*, Diallo I*, Sylla MB, De Sales F, Diedhiou A. (2020) Late 21st Century Projected Changes in the Relationship between Precipitation, African Easterly Jet, and African Easterly Waves. Atmosphere, 11(4), 353. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos11040353. (*corresponding author and these authors have contributed equally to this work)
• Diallo I, Xue Y, Li Q, De Sales F, Li W. (2019) Dynamical downscaling the impact of spring Western U.S. land surface temperature on the 2015 flood extremes at the Southern Great Plains: Effect of domain choice, dynamic cores and land surface parameterization. Climate Dynamics, 53(1-2), 1039-1061. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s00382-019-04630-6.
• Fotso-Nguemo TC, Diallo I, Diakhaté M, Vondou DA, Mbaye ML, Haensler A, Gaye AT, Tchawoua C. (2019) Projected changes in the seasonal cycle of daily rainfall characteristics for the twenty first century in CORDEX projections. Climatic Change, 155(3), 339-357. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02492-9
• Bamba A^*, Diallo I^*, N’Datchoh ET, Kouadio K, Konaré A, Dramé MS, Diedhiou A, Silué S, Doumbia M, Tall M. (2019) Effect of the African greenbelt position on West African summer climate: a regional climate modeling study. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, 137(1-2), 309-322. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-018-2589-z. (^*These authors have contributed equally to this work). 
• Diallo I, Giorgi F, Stordal F. (2018) Influence of Lake Malawi on regional from a double-nested regional climate model experiment. Climate Dynamics, 50, 3397-3411. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-017-3811-x
• Xue Y, Diallo I, Li W, Neelin JD, Chu PC, Vasic R, Guo W, Li Q, Robinson DA, Zhu Y, Fu C, Oaida CM. (2018) Spring Land Surface and Subsurface Temperature Anomalies and Subsequent Downstream Late Spring-Summer Droughts/Floods in North America and East Asia. Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmosphere, 123, 5001-5019. https://doi.org/10.1029/2017JD028246. (Featured on the cover of May issue).
• N’Datchoh ET, Diallo I, Konare A, Silue S, Ogunjobi KO, Diedhiou A, Doumbia M. (2018) Dust induced changes on the West African summer monsoon features. International journal of Climatology, 38, 452-466.  https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5187

Full List of Publications: 

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• ResearchGate