Here is a non-exhaustive list of my current research interests and some of the questions I am thinking about as part of my PhD and beyond. My interests are probably about as broad as my attention span is short, so this is very much a work in progress. Some of these questions are active research projects, while others are ideas that I am still exploring.

As ever, I am always keen to talk about any of these topics, so feel free to get in touch by email if you would like to chat!

Terrestrial Humidity

We theoretically expect terrestrial relative humidity to decline in a warming world, and most climate models simulate this drying. However, the magnitude of the response varies substantially between models. Furthermore, models have struggled to reproduce the strong terrestrial drying observed over the historical period, raising questions about our fundamental understanding of the processes that control land humidity.

Key Questions

  • How does land humidity respond to ocean warming?
  • What controls the spread of projections across climate models?
  • Can physical theory improve predictions of future hydroclimate change?

Investigating these questions led to the identification of an emergent constraint on tropical land relative humidity change, which we are currently under review at PNAS.

I have also contributed to work led by Mike Byrne using isotope-enabled climate models to investigate the relative contributions of oceanic and terrestrial sources of atmospheric water vapour. This work is currently under review at the Journal of Climate.

Land–Ocean Warming Contrasts

A robust result from early climate modelling is that global land surfaces are expected to warm more rapidly than the global ocean. This land–ocean warming contrast can be understood through several physical frameworks, including differences in surface energy balance, heat capacity, and the availability of evaporative cooling over land and ocean.

However, the magnitude of this warming contrast differs substantially between coupled climate models and atmosphere-only (AMIP) simulations over the historical period. Understanding the origin of these differences may provide insight into how atmospheric dynamics and land–ocean interactions shape the response of the climate system to warming.

Key Questions

  • Can we use constraints from climate dynamics to understand differences between coupled and AMIP simulations?
  • What physical processes control the magnitude of the land–ocean warming contrast?
  • How does atmospheric circulation influence the relationship between land and ocean warming?
  • Can understanding these mechanisms help constrain future land–ocean warming contrasts?

Atmospheric Dynamics and Moist Static Energy

In the tropics, thermodynamic constraints such as convective quasi-equilibrium (CQE) and weak temperature gradients (WTG) provide powerful frameworks for understanding and constraining the atmospheric response to warming. These theories link the thermodynamic state of the atmosphere to convection and large-scale circulation, and help explain why tropical temperature and moisture fields are often much more tightly constrained than might otherwise be expected.

However, these constraints are not perfect. Their departures can also differ systematically between climate models and between different types of simulations, raising questions about what physical processes allow the tropical atmosphere to deviate from the idealized states described by CQE and WTG.

I am interested in understanding these departures from first principles. Developing a better theoretical framework for when and why these constraints break down may help us understand differences between models, connect thermodynamic responses to atmospheric dynamics, and ultimately improve our ability to interpret and constrain tropical climate change.

Key Questions

  • How well do CQE and WTG constrain the tropical thermodynamic response?
  • What physical processes allow the atmosphere to deviate from these constraints?
  • Why do departures from the constraints differ between climate models and simulation types?
  • Can moist static energy provide a useful framework for connecting convection, circulation, and climate response?
  • Can a better understanding of these deviations help explain inter-model differences in tropical climate change?

Lagrangian Decomposition of Column Humidity

Developing methods inspired by Lagrangian precipitation source decomposition approaches (e.g., Sodemann and Stohl) to investigate the origins and evolution of atmospheric moisture.

While this work is still in its early stages and a specific scientific question is yet to be defined, the development of these methods provides a powerful framework for tracing the pathways of atmospheric water vapour and understanding the processes that control moisture distributions. These approaches could potentially be used to investigate moisture transport, land–atmosphere coupling, hydroclimate variability, and the relative importance of different moisture sources in a changing climate.

Key Questions

  • What controls the sources and pathways of atmospheric moisture?
  • How do different moisture sources contribute to regional humidity changes?
  • Can Lagrangian methods provide new insights into land–atmosphere interactions?
  • Can Lagrangian methods be used to interogate weaknesses in theory?

As always feel free to reach out to chat about any of these topics or suggest something I should look into!