Climate Feedbacks | Regional Climate Dynamics  | Interdisciplinary

The overarching goal of our research is to narrow uncertainties surrounding climate variability and change.  These pages provide an introduction to our research on this problem at mutliple levels of detail.  Here you can find descriptions of topics and objectives, which lead to discussions of individual projects, complete with clickable figures.  

The first major thrust of our work is in the area of climate feedbacks.  These processes control the planet's response to an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.  Uncertainty surrounding them is a major reason why current global climate models give such a large range of responses in future climate change experiments.  A distinct theme of our work in this area is the use of current observations to constrain models' climate feedbacks.

Another major thrust is in regional climate dynamics.  Because global climate models are relatively coarse in resolution, they provide little information about climate and climate change at scales most relevant to people and ecosystems. The goal of this work is to understand the forces shaping climate at the regional scale.  We rely on observations and newly-emerging, high-resolution regional earth system models, which we are active in developing.

As the science of climate matures, and interest in climate-related issues mounts, opportunities for interdisciplinary research are also on the rise.  We are increasingly involved in collaborations across disciplines, applying climate science in areas such as fire, ecology, water resources, and renewable energy.

Our research is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and NASA.