Interests
Earth's climate system is fundamentally influenced by interactions among its basic components: the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, and land. My research examines how the constituent elements of the surface—the oceans, cryosphere, and land—interact with the atmosphere and with each other to shape Earth's climate. I also examine how these interactions both respond to and influence climate change, including abrupt changes in radiative forcing, realistic future emission scenarios, and orbital cycles that alter incoming solar radiation. My work thus spans a range of topics within climate dynamics and climate change but tends to revolve around the large-scale circulations of the atmosphere and oceans, sea ice, polar climate, climate feedbacks, the hydrological cycle, and energetic processes in the land, oceans, and atmosphere.
I use a range of computational tools and techniques, including comprehensive Earth system models, targeted experiments with climate models of varying complexity, mathematical conceptual models that provide simplified representations of underlying physical processes, and advanced statistical methods. These tools and techniques together allow me to develop theories that explain observed physical phenomena and the behavior of climate models.
The field of climate dynamics is inherently interdisciplinary, as the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, and land are intimately coupled and influence Earth’s climate on timescales ranging from seasons to millennia. I enjoy working and collaborating on research questions that are at the intersection of these components.