Personal Website
News:
- New MSCA Doctoral Network on Dust! Candidates have now been recruited and we look forward to welcoming them throughout 2025. Read more...
- Blog post by Natalie Ratcliffe about life on a field campaign
Research Leadership:
- AMCCA (Airborne Measurments of Charged Cloud and Aerosol) project Co-I, FAAM Research Runway project
- DAZSAL (Diurnal vAriation of the vertically resolved siZe distribution in the Saharan Air Layer) project Co-I, ATMO-ACCESS TNA funding, working with the ASKOS project
- Co-Convenor of EGU 2025 Aeolian Dust Session
- Member of the FAAM research aircraft Scientific Advisory Group for the Mid Life Upgrade
- NERC Independent Research Fellow: The Role of Coarse Mineral Dust in the Climate System, 2015-2022
- Vice-Chair of inDust Cost Action Network WG1 (Observations)
- Committee Member Lead for Royal Meteorological Society Atmospheric Science Conference 2021 Adaption and Resilience
Academic Leadership and Teaching:
Research Interests:
- Atmospheric mineral dust and aerosols
- Airborne observations of aerosols
- Optical properties, microphysical properties (e.g. size distributions) and radiative effects of aerosols
- Representation of mineral dust in NWP and climate models
- Application and improvement of mineral dust properties in satellite and remote sensing retrievals
- Dust impacts on cloud, climate, weather, solar energy, aircraft, health, ecosystems
Current and Upcoming Research Projects:
- Dust-DN: a MSCA Interdisciplinary Dust Doctoral Network - more information coming soon...
- AMCCA (Airborne Measurments of Charged Cloud and Aerosol) FAAM Research Runway project
- DAZSAL: Diurnal vAriation of the vertically resolved siZe distribution in the Saharan Air Layer (EU ATMO-ACCESS TNA)
Research Group
Previous Group Members
- Jon Elsey, PDRA working on the MAPP project (Metrology for Aerosol OPtical Properties)
- Alcide Zhao, PDRA on the DAHLIA project (dust-climate interactions in East Asia)
- Dhirendra Kumar, PDRA on the DAHLIA project (dust-weather interactions in East Asia)
- Liang Guo, PDRA on the DAHLIA project (dust-climate interactions in East Asia)
- Clement Bezier, Student internship partnered with Rolls Royce and ECMWF examining dust ingestion by aircraft engines at worldwide airports
Past Research Projects:
- MAPP: Metrology for Aerosol Optical Properties (EU Horizon 2020)
- NERC Independent Research Fellowship: The Role of Coarse Mineral Dust Particles in the Climate System
- DAHLIA: Dust-AtmospHere-Land Interactions in East Asia (Newton Fund)
- AER-D/ICE-D: Aerosol Properties - Dust / Ice in Clouds Experiment - Dust
- EUFAR SAVEX-D: Sunphotometer Validation EXperiment - Dust in ICE-D
- Fennec: The Saharan Climate System
MSc student supervision
- 2023 - Alex Henry, Low-level jets in the central-western Sahara: comparing aircraft observations to model simulations, awarded Best MSc Project Prize
- 2023 - James Kelsey, Settling dynamics of non-spherical mineral dust particles explored in the lab using 3D-printed analogues, co-supervised with Dr Chris Westbrook
- 2022 - Ann Liya, How good are the New Pyrgeometers on the FAAM Aircraft? co-supervised by Dr Jon Elsey and Dr Stuart Fox (Met Office)
- 2021 - Simran Chopra, Optical Properties of High Latitude Dust, co-supervised by Dr Alberto Sanchez-Marroquin (University of Leeds)
- 2020 - Jianing Li, The Australian 2019/2020 Wildfire Season
- 2020 - Marina Liaskoni, Radar observations of Giant Dust Particles during Ex-Hurricane Ophelia, co-supervised by Dr Chris Westbrook
- 2019 - Ian Wan, The radiative role of enhanced water vapor within aerosol layers
- 2015 - Mohammad Kashoob, The impact of dust size distributions on the Radiation Budget over the Sahara
- 2013 - Zoe Jacobs, Dust and Radiation in the Sahara
- 2011 - Laura Tyas, Dust and Atlantic Tropical Cyclones
Undergraduate student supervision
- 2023 - George Hawkins, Ingestion of desert dust by aircraft engines in the Middle East, awarded best undergraduate project prize
- 2022 - Chen Chen, Evaluation of ECMWF CAMS dust forecasts during the ASKOS fieldwork in Cape Verde, co-supervised by Dr Angela Benedetti
- 2019 - Rebecca Smith, Giant aerosol particles during storm Ophelia
- 2017 - Kieran Pope, The impact of absorbing aerosols and cloud on the energy budget, awarded Best Undergrad Project Prize
- 2014 - Mohammad Hassan, The Impact of Saharan Dust on Longwave Radiation from Aircraft Measurements
- 2012 - Olivia Coleman, The Impact of megacities on air pollution
- 2011 - Murad Mohamed, The Saharan Dust Season of 2010 and 2011
- 2010 - Using a community weather station network to determine evidence for the London Urban Heat Island
Summer Students
- 2023 - Max McDonald, NERC SCENARIO, The effect of diurnal heating in the SAL on dust size distributions during DAZSAL, and AMCCA radiosonde releases
- 2019 - Adam Harland, NERC SCENARIO, The Impact of Cloud and Saharan Dust on Solar Energy Generation in the UK
- 2017 - Luke Orgill, NERC SCENARIO, Assessing Instrument Sandblasting on a Research Aircraft
MSc Team Projects
- 2023 - The 2020 ‘Godzilla’ Dust plume
- 2017 - The Global Dust Cycle