Understanding climate change and variability within the polar regions and links to the wider Earth system
Research Area
My research spans both polar regions, with a focus on examining the statistical relationships between the different atmospheric components of the climate system. As a member of the Atmosphere, Ice and Climate group at the British Antarctic Survey, I have access to a large number of polar meteorological and satellite observations, together with data from global atmospheric reanalyses and output from global and regional climate models. Taken collectively, these datasets allow a comprehensive analysis and understanding of the processes that drive the climate of the polar regions.
I am currently involved in a variety of UK and international projects, which are investigating: (i) the links between Arctic and North Atlantic climate variability and extremes in the UK, (ii) the benefits of improving model resolution in the polar regions, (iii) changes in the Antarctic hydrological cycle, (iv) the causes of extremes in Antarctic climate, and (v) the resilience of the UK to changes in the polar regions. These collaborations are an enjoyable part of being an academic and allow access to additional data and specialist skills and knowledge. I have also undertaken a variety of fieldwork, from drilling shallow ice cores in Antarctica to micro-climate analysis of Arctic vegetation.
Project Interests
I am especially interested in analysing past and projected future changes in Northern Hemisphere snow cover and its relationship to large-scale modes of atmospheric variability. Work by myself and others to date has demonstrated that these relationships vary significantly through time, and I am interested in determining which are the key processes driving this variability. One technique that I would like to utilise is Snapshot Empirical Orthogonal Function (SEOF) analysis using large ensembles from different global climate models: this allows us to examine the temporal evolution of the relationships and the relative strength of the forced and internal variability components.
