Mission & Vision
My group aims to understand the global patterns of winds in the atmosphere and currents in the ocean. These winds and currents are critical to the climate system primarily because of what they carry; they transport heat and substances—such as moisture, carbon, and air pollution—collectively known as tracers. The distributions of tracers impact weather, climate and human health, and these distributions are shaped by the winds and currents, among other processes. By understanding the interaction between the distributions of tracers and the underlying flow, we can: 1) better interpret observations to understand the flow and any trends, and 2) understand the how the velocities impact tracers in the present and how that might change in the future. We use theory, simple models, complex models, and observations to decode the relationships between velocities and tracers so that we can better understand how the distributions of heat, carbon, and air pollutants will change in a warming world.
Ongoing projects:
- Age of air in the stratosphere and trends in the stratospheric circulation and composition
- Tropospheric jet dynamics, temperature distributions, and extreme events
- Age of ocean water and the large scale ocean circulation
- Interrelationships between long-lived tracers and their interpretation for large scale flow and trends