Welcome to Manoj Joshi's personal (ish) webpage
Welcome to Manoj Joshi's personal (ish) webpage
I'm a university lecturer affiliated with NCAS Climate
Earth system modelling and climate
I was project manager of the QUEST project's earth system model QESM
I used to be a research scientist at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change, doing earth system science and climate model development, from carbon cycle modelling to coupled-ocean atmosphere processes in the tropics, to looking at mechanisms behind land surface temperature feedbacks under climate change, and climatic effects of volcanic eruptions.
The land/sea warming contrast
It's well-known that
the land warms more than the ocean under climate- but it's less known
that the differing thermal inertias of ocean and land are not
mainly responsible for this. I've looked at mechanisms underlying this
phenomenon under a range of climate forcings.
This is a collaboration with Jonathan Gregory and
Hugo Lambert
amongst others
Stratospheric change and climate change
A key
interest of mine is understanding how the stratosphere mitigates the
climate and Earth system response to different radiative drivers or
forcings, such as solar variability, volcanic aerosol or water
vapour. At the moment I'm examining the effect of radiative vs dynamic
effects of solar variability on climate as part of
SOLCI. I've also been involved with looking at how the stratosphere changes
extratropical response to ENSO (see publications).
Water vapour in the stratosphere
I'm looking at how
stratospheric water vapour affects climate. It's known that volcanic
eruptions act to dry out the upper troposphere, but the effect on the
lower stratosphere might be to make it wetter. Volcanic eruptions
could explain a significant part of the observed increase in
stratospheric water vapour concentrations since 1960. I'm also involved with examining other effects
of stratospheric water vapour.
Also see The radiation/climate group website
and the The stratosphere/climate group website
Refining metrics of climate change
Radiative
forcing is an example of such a metric (or measure) that is utilised
in the Kyoto Protocol. However, as a measure of climate change, it has
its flaws, so we're trying to find improved metrics of global warming
related to radiative forcing. The METRIC project
website explains more. Click on the publications link at the bottom
of this webpage for references to papers that the METRIC team have
produced.
Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Processes
I'm looking at
the effect of stochastic
processes in the ocean component of the FAMOUS climate model. In the past
I've examined the effect of coupling a simplified high-resolution
(1/6° - 1/12°) shallow-water ocean model of the Atlantic Ocean
to the IGCM in
order to investigate the North Atlantic storm track, as well as the
potential changes in the thermohaline circulation. The advantages of
this approach is that it allows the representation of small-scale
features like ocean Kelvin waves and the Gulfstream, but is not as
computationally intensive as running state-of-the-art coupled
multilayer global ocean models.
More recently I've collaborated on work that examined the effect of chlorophyll blooms on SST biases in the Arabian Sea and its effect on the South Asian monsoon.
Terrestrial planetary atmospheres
A lot of my career
has been spent researching the circulation and evolution of the Martian
(and Venusian) atmospheres. Before coming to Reading I spent 4 years
working in this
group. And before that I did a PhD at this place.
Extrasolar planets
Astronomers tend
to concentrate searches for planets around G-type stars like the sun,
rather than smaller M-stars (commonly called red dwarf stars), even
though M stars constitute 80% of all main sequence stars. Some of the
reasons for this are unavoidable given limitations in
technology. However, other reasons for this bias are based on
assumptions about the nature of the geophysics of planets orbiting M
stars which may be flawed. The modelling work aimed to highlight such
flaws.
And finally, obligatory
self-publicity:
Here are some of my publications
An article about the extrasolar planet research appeared in New Scientist in 2001. Read it here.
And I suppose I have to mention El Nino and ashes cricket in Australia