Responsibilities:
Research Interests:
- Earth System model development
- Ice-sheet--Climate interactions
- Sea-level rise
- Stability of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation
- Paleoclimate, especially the glacial cycles of the last million years
- Impacts of Geoengineering
I lead the UK multi-centre efforts to develop and exploit ice sheet modelling capabilities within the UKESM and foster links across the international community of Earth System modellers interested in land ice processes.
Research Projects:
- The UK Earth System Model: A joint NERC/MetOffice project to develop the next-generation Earth System Model for the UK Climate community
- TerraFIRMA: NERC Long Term Multi Centre project delivering a suite of novel future climate projections and an assessment of the leading mitigation options available to limit future Earth System change
- ISMIP: A WCRP Climate and Cryosphere targeted activity to explore the sea level rise contributions from Greenland and Antarctica as part of CMIP, partly funded bu the Heising-Simons Foundation.
- ESM2025: An EU project building a new generation of Earth system models fitted to support the development of mitigation and adaptation strategies in line with the commitments of the Paris Agreement.
- OCEAN:ICE: An EU project understanding how the Antarctic ice sheet and the surrounding Southern Ocean influence our global climate and reduce the level of uncertainty around how much the Antarctic ice sheet will melt in the coming centuries.
- OptimESM: An EU project developing the next generation of ESMs, bringing together increased model resolution and process realism to provide guidance on regional climate change at different levels of global warming and the risk of abrupt Earth system changes.
- TipESM: An EU project delivering a step change in our understanding of climate tipping points in the Earth system, including their impact on ecosystems and society, combined with a set of early warning indicators and safe future emission pathways that minimise the risk of exceeding such tipping points.
- TIPMIP: An international model intercomparison project that aims to systematically advance our understanding of tipping dynamics in various Earth system components and assess the associated uncertainties.
- ExtAnt: A NERC project investigating the drivers and impacts of extreme weather events in Antarctica
- ISOTIPIC: A NERC project helping to understand the processes controlling key tipping points associated with the oceans and ice sheets, and assess their potential impacts on society and the global Earth system.
- RASP: A NERC project investigating how large scale Southern Ocean conditions can be used to predict water mass properties under Antarctic ice shelves and thus projections of ice sheet change
- GRAIL: An ARIA Tipping Points project improving how the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre and the Greenland Ice Sheet, and their interactions, are represented by the UK Earth System Model.
- PROMOTE: An ARIA Tipping Points project understanding complex physical processes at difficult-to-access ice faces and floating ice shelves in north and east Greenland by developing new sensors and platforms and implementing improved physics in the UK Earth System Model.
- FAMOUS: a low resolution Earth System model based on the widely used HadCM3 atmosphere/ocean coupled general circulation model
Postdoctoral & graduate student supervision