Associate Professor
Email: afrei@hunter.cuny.edu
Phone: 212-772-5322
Fax: 212-772-5268
Office: 1035 HN

Mailing Address:
Department of Geography
Hunter College of the City University of New York
695 Park Ave.
New York, NY 10065

[ Education | Interests | Projects | Students | Courses | Publications | Links ]

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Biography:

Prof. Frei is a climatologist whose research interests have focused on issues related to climate change and changes in snow cover across Northern Hemisphere lands; and on issues of climate change and water resources. One current research project is an investigation of the impact of changing Arctic sea ice on Arctic snow cover (funded by NASA). In addition, Prof. Frei is currently involved in three projects related to climate change impacts on water resources in New York State, which are funded by the New York State Water Resources Institute, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. These projects include research as well as working with stakeholders.

Prof. Frei’s main educational interests have been in curriculum development for the Environmental Studies and Physical Geography branches of the department. Along with colleagues, he helped create the curriculum for the new Environmental Studies Major, and he played a major role in developing the Earth System Science course sequence. He continues to play an active role in updating the curriculum as the needs of the students and department evolve. Prof. Frei has taught a number of courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, mostly in physical and quantitative geography. In addition, Prof. Frei has served on the advisory committees for a number of graduate students, and has taught numerous independent studies to Graduate students.

Education:

Ph.D.	1997	Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, Geography
M.S.	1987	New York University, New York, NY, Applied Science
B.A.	1983	New York University, New York, NY, Computer Science

Research Interests:

Climate variations, snow cover fluctuations, water resources

Teaching Interests:

Weather & Climate, Earth Systems Science

Current Projects:

• Understand linkages between sea ice and snow cover in the Arctic Climate System
• Evaluate potential impacts of climate change on New York City water supply
• Evaluate climate impacts on the terrestrial mercury cycle

Students:

Current Graduate Student Advisees:

• Debjani Ghatak 

Graduated Master Students:

• Richard Swanson (May 2002)
• Samual Kess (January 2003)
• Joanna Grossman (2005)
• Stefan Sobolowski (2005)

Courses:

• GEOG 130 - Weather and Climate

• PGEOG 250 - Earth Systems Science I

• PGEOG 251 - Earth Systems Science II

• GTECH 704.52 - Introduction to Environmental Modeling

• GTECH 702 - Quantitative Methods 2: Multivariate Statistics and Regression Analysis

• GTECH 703.56 - Applied Statistics in Hydrology

• GEOG 383.28/705.28 - Environmental Ethics 

Publications: Since 2007

Ge, Yan, G. Gong, and A. Frei, 2009. Physical mechanisms linking the winter Pacific-North American teleconnection pattern to spring North American snow depth, Journal of Climate, in press

Frei, A., 2009. A new generation of satellite snow observations for large scale earth system studies, Geography Compass 3: 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00221.x

Frei, Allan, 2009, Invited Book Review: Snow and Climate: Physical Processes, Surface Energy Exchange and Modeling, Richard L. Armstrong and Eric Brun (ed.), Cambridge University Press, 2008, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, V90, no. 4, April 2009, p. 539-540

Stroeve, Julienne, A. Frei, D. Ghatak, and J. McCreight, 2008. Arctic Sea Ice Variability Revisited, Annals of Glaciology, V48, p. 71-81

Brown, Ross D. and Allan Frei, 2007. Comment on "Evaluation of surface albedo and snow cover in AR4 coupled models" by A. Roesch, Journal of Geophysical Research, 112, D22102, doi:10.1029/2006JD008339

Randall, D.A., R.A. Wood, S. Bony, R. Colman, T. Fichefet, J. Fyfe, V. Kattsov, A. Pitman, J. Shukla, J. Srinivasan, R.J. Stouffer, A. Sumi and K.E. Taylor, 2007: Climate Models and Their Evaluation. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. **Frei is a "Contributing Author" to this IPCC chapter, and therefore his name does not appear on the citation.

Tu, Jun, Zong-Guo Xia, Keith Clarke, Allan Frei, 2007, Impact of Urban Sprawl on Water Quality in Eastern Massachusetts, USA, Environmental Management, 40:183-200

Carpi, A., Frei, A., Cocris, D., McCloskey, R., Contreras, E., & Ferguson, K. (2007) Analytical artifacts produced by a polycarbonate chamber compared to a Teflon chamber for measuring surface mercury fluxes, Analytical & Bioanalytical Chemistry, 388(2):361-365

Sobolowski, Stefan, and Allan Frei, 2007, Lagged relationships between North American snow mass and atmospheric teleconnection indices, International Journal of Climatology, V27, p. 221-231, DOI: 10.1002/joc.1395

Links:

• Association of American Geographers Cryosphere Specialty Group