Laura Wilcox's home page

I am a Professor at the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) in the University of Reading interested in the role of anthropogenic aerosol in regional climate change. I split my time between several projects:

In BlackRain we are working to quantify the link between black carbon emissions and changes in mean and extreme rainfall in Africa and Asia.

As part of CATHY (Climate implications of rapid changes in Asian Anthropogenic Aerosol emissions: Temperature, Hydrological cycle and variabilitY) we are quantifying climate related hazards resulting from ongoing and projected changes in Asian aerosol emissions. The range of climate impacts and societal hazards may dominate regionally over greenhouse gas induced trends for the next several decades, but are not well understood. I am analysing global responses to local aerosol changes in climate models with a range of complexities to better understand the physical mechanisms involved.

In CleanCloud we are exploring how the influence of aerosols on climate change as we transition to a world with cleaner air. I am particularly interested in how the influence of aerosols changes far from their source regions.

MACLOUD utilises multi-scale modelling to assess the potential of several marine cloud brightening (MCB) strategies and scenarios. In Reading, we are looking for ways to combine deployment regions to minimise the regional climate impacts of MCB, and investigating case studies of how MCB might help or hinder key components of the Earth system.

In OUTBREAK we are working to improve our understanding of the drivers of extended and severe monsoon breaks, and the role of monsoon breaks in heat extremes and poor air quality episodes.

In TerraFIRMA we are assessing a range of climate mitigation strategies and investigating the risks and consequences associated with overshooting key global warming targets, including the risk of rapid change in a range of regional climate phenomena and the potential reversibility of any triggered changes. My work focusses on the role of near-future changes in anthropogenic aerosol emissions, and the potential air quality co-benefits in climate mitigation strategies.

I am also the co-chair of RAMIP (Regional Aerosol Model Intercomparison Project). This is a set of experiments designed to quantify the role of anthropogenic aerosol in the spread in near-term climate projections. The experiments are based on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and designed to quantify the role of global and regional aerosol changes in near-term projections, and explore sensitivities to aerosol type and location. By performing these experiments with a number of models we can also explore sensitivities to the strength of aerosol forcing, and to differences in the representation of key climate processes.

Follow the links at the top of the page to find out more.

Previous projects

Climate Science for Service Partnership: China (CSSP China): Across a number of projects, we looked at the relationship between aerosols and regional climate dynamics, and the importance of the complexity of the representation of both natural and anthropogenic aerosols in models for their simulation of climate and climate change.

EMERGENCE: Working with Paul-Arthur Monerie and Andrew turner we quantified the effect of aerosol on climate hazards, with a particular focus on the monsoons.

ACSIS: I explored the role of aerosol in the North Atlantic climate system.

SMURPHS: Working with Andrea Dittus and Ed Hawkins to characterise the interactions between the climate response to anthropogenic aerosol emissions and natural variability, and explore the effects of uncertainty in aerosol forcing on the representation of historical climate.

EUCLEIA: I quantified the role of air-sea interactions in the attribution of extreme weather events in Europe, and quantified the relative roles of natural and anthropogenic contributions to the extreme summers of 2012 and 2015, and the extreme winter of 2009-2010.

PAGODA: I identified aerosol influences on the water cycle, and quantified the relative importance of sources of uncertainty in aerosol radiative forcing.

I have also worked with Andrew Charlton-Perez to quantify the importance of the role of the modelled stratosphere in simulations of climate and climate change.