Areas of research that I am currently working on are listed below. There are also links to my publications, and to the websites of any research lab or group that I have worked with during my career, starting with my current affiliation.
Publications |
Current Research Interests: |
Water isotope-enabeled Community Earth System Model (iCESM) |
| I am currently working on adding stable water isotopologues to NCAR's CESM model. This will allow for the forward-modeling of several paleoclimate proxies, and for the further development of model parameterizations by comparing their isotopic outputs to observations. This model improvement will also allow for the tagging and tracing of water from different sources, thus allowing one to determine exactly where water in a certain location or state comes from, and where it actually goes. The atmosphere component of this model will hopefully be complete by the beginning of 2014. If you are interested in using this component (CAM5) with water isotopes or water tracers, feel free to contact me. |
Observations of water isotope ratios in the atmosphere |
In order to validate and improve isotope-enabled climate models, observations of water isotopologues in the atmosphere are needed. In particular, in-situ observations that can generate long time series would be ideal for both capturing climate-scale processes as well as providing robust data to help calibrate satellite and other remote-sensing measurements. Currently, I am involved with collecting precipitation measurements on the University of Colorado's campus. Those measurements are in the process of being accepted into the Global Network of Isotopes in Precipitation (GNIP) database. I am also helping with the analysis of in-situ vapor isotope ratio data collected at the Mauna Loa Observatory. These data are obtained via a Picarro spectrometer set up by the Climate Proccesses Research Group here at Colorado. Please contact me if you are interested in accessing these data. |
Atmospheric moisture transport in GCMs: |
| GCM hydrologic cycles (and geophysical quantities in general) are often times analyzed in terms of averages. Although one can certainly gain information from a comparison of averages, a better question might be how well are the distributions themselves simulated in a GCM. This is definitely important in atmospheric moisture transport, where the distribution is heavily skewed in the midlatitudes. Understanding why this skewness exists, and determining how well GCMs capture this skewness, can provide a better understanding of moisture transport in the atmosphere, which could have implications for weather and hydrologic forecasting, as well as global climate change projections. |
Atmospheric Rivers: |
| One aspect of moisture transport in the troposphere is a phenomenon called an Atmospheric River (AR). These are long, thin, horizontal filaments of elevated moisture transport that have been known to cause heavy precipitation and flooding in the Coastal and Gulf regions of the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom and Norway. Although research has been done on ARs for these specific regions, very little work has been done on their global aspects. This could be important given that they occur quite frequently over the extratropical oceans, and some early research indicated that they could play a significant role in poleward moisture tranport. By using reanalyses and climate models, it is hoped that one can get a better grasp on what role ARs play in the global moisture and energy cycles, what dynamical processes control and influence them, and how they might change with global warming. |
Current Research Group: |
Climate Processes Research Group -- A research group run by professor David Noone at CU-boulder. |
Past Research Groups: |
| Climate Dynamics Prediction Lab -- A research lab run by professor Matthew Huber at Purdue University. |
| Biogeochemical Cycles Group -- A research group run by professor Katsumi Matsumoto at the University of Minnesota. |