The processes responsible for climate change and variability in the Antarctic, Arctic, and Himalayan region.
Research Area
My research area and interests are the physical and dynamical processes responsible for climate change and variability in the Antarctic, Arctic, and Himalayan region. This is predominately achieved using regional climate, global climate, and chemistry-climate models, and most recently Earth System Models and machine-learning. I use my research to understand high-impact inter-disciplinary globally-important problems, such as how Earth’s climate system is causing i) changes to the hydroclimate of the Himalayan region resulting in shrinkage of its glaciers and snowpack, which presents a formidable water-resource problem, and ii) how interactions between the atmosphere and cryosphere in the Antarctic are causing increased ice loss from its ice sheets, which is contributing to sea-level rise. A significant research area is also focused on investigating the Antarctic ozone hole (stratospheric ozone depletion), and how this affects Southern Hemisphere climate. And most recently investigating extreme weather events in the Antarctic and Himalayan region, which despite being high impact are poorly understood. I like to work very collaboratively, and especially with other international regional climate modelling groups, which allows for the sharing of data and coordination of science. My main industrial partner is with the UK Met Office.
Project Interests
I have a broad range of interests related to climate change and variability and would be interested in co-developing a wide variety of projects around this. This could involve both the polar regions (Arctic and Antarctic) or any high-mountain region (e.g., Himalayas, Andes, Alps, Rockies), using methods such as atmospheric models (either exisiting datasets or running new simulations), observations, and perhaps machine-learning. One interesting idea would be to use satellite imagery and high-resolution atmospheric model simulations to investigate the vulnerability of Antarctic ice shelves to surface melting induced by extreme weather events, which can increase the likelihood of their collapse.
