My main focus is climate dynamics, which involves studying a wide range of climatic problems using models that vary in complexity from simple conceptual ideas to large state-of-the-art global circulation models. My research has ranged from understanding atmosphere and ocean processes underlying large-scale patterns of climate and climate change on Earth, to processes in planetary atmospheres. I have particularly contributed to advances in understanding the land-ocean warming contrast under anthropogenic climate change, the climate of exoplanets, the effect of the stratosphere on surface climate, and the timing or emergence of climate impacts over the coming decades.
As a planetary scientist in the 1990s I participated in analysis of data from two NASA spacecraft. Since 2000 I have worked more on terrestrial climate research, firstly at the Department of Meteorology at Reading University, then at the Met Office’s Hadley Centre for Climate Change, where I worked on coupled ocean-atmosphere modelling. I was project manager of the NERC QUEST “QESM” Earth system modelling project, and I am now faculty at the University of East Anglia. I was a contributing author to chapter 12 (long-term projections) of the 5th assessment report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC AR5). I also contributed to the Royal Society’s report on “Geoengineering the climate” in 2009.
Role at Tyndall
I’m a member of faculty within environmental sciences, and I mostly do computer modelling and theory of physical processes underlying climate and climate change.
