Dr. Alex Baker
Research Scientist (NCAS)
Responsibilities:
Research Scientist in the High Resolution Climate Modelling (HRCM) research group, a long-standing collaboration between NCAS-Climate at the University of Reading and the Met Office Hadley Centre. Additionally, I am the administrator for HRCM's website and also sit on the Department of Meteorology's Research-funded Staff Forum as the representative for house, health and safety matters.
Research Interests:
- Precipitation extremes and climate change
- Extratropical cyclones and resolution sensitivity
- Global high-resolution climate model evaluation
- European climate and decadal variability
- Palaeoclimate and water isotopes
- East Asian monsoon climate
Research Projects:
- PRIMAVERA: PRocess-based climate sIMulation: AdVances in high-resolution modelling and European climate Risk Assessment. PRIMAVERA is a European Union Horizon2020 project which aims "to develop a new generation of advanced and well-evaluated high-resolution global climate models, capable of simulating and predicting regional climate with unprecedented fidelity, for the benefit of governments, business and society in general." Within PRIMAVERA, I study the representation of European extreme precipitation in a new generation of high-resolution global climate models, both atmosphere-only and coupled, such as HadGEM3. I am particularly interested in how precipitation extremes are driven by mid-latitude phenomena, such as extratropical cyclones, and how extremes are associated with modes of large-scale atmospheric variability, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, and ocean-atmosphere variability, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. (Supervisors: Reinhard Schiemann and Pier Luigi Vidale.)
- Collaboration with the hydrocarbon industry to improve assessments of tropical-cyclone risk to offshore infrastructure.
Supervision:
- Elliott Sainsbury Ph.D. 2019-2022 The role of post-tropical cyclones for European extreme weather
My research online:
- Google Scholar
- ResearchGate
- Personal website and blog
- High-Resolution Climate Modelling group
- Follow @alexbakey
Centaur Publications
2022
Sainsbury, E. M. 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5626-5583, Schiemann, R. K. H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3095-9856, Hodges, K. I., Baker, A. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-1350, Shaffrey, L. C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2696-752X, Bhatia, K. T. and Bourdin, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2635-5654
(2022)
Can low-resolution CMIP6 ScenarioMIP models provide insight into future European post-tropical-cyclone risk?
Weather and Climate Dynamics, 3 (4).
pp. 1359-1379.
ISSN 2698-4016
doi: https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-3-1359-2022
Athanasiadis, P. J., Ogawa, F., Omrani, N.-E., Keenlyside, N., Schiemann, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3095-9856, Baker, A. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-1350, Vidale, P. L., Bellucci, A., Ruggieri, P., Haarsma, R., Roberts, M., Roberts, C., Novak, L. and Gualdi, S.
(2022)
Mitigating climate biases in the mid-latitude North Atlantic by increasing model resolution: SST gradients and their relation to blocking and the jet.
Journal of Climate, 35 (21).
pp. 3379-3400.
ISSN 1520-0442
doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0515.1
Sainsbury, E. M., Schiemann, R. K. H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3095-9856, Hodges, K. I., Baker, A. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-1350, Shaffrey, L. C. and Bhatia, K. T.
(2022)
Why do some post-tropical cyclones impact europe?
Monthly Weather Review, 150 (10).
pp. 2553-2571.
ISSN 1520-0493
doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/MWR-D-22-0111.1
Baker, A. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-1350, Roberts, M. J., Vidale, P. L., Hodges, K. I., Seddon, J., Vanniere, B. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8600-400X, Haarsma, R. J., Schiemann, R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3095-9856, Kapetanakis, D., Tourigny, E., Lohmann, K., Roberts, C. D. and Terray, L.
(2022)
Extratropical transition of tropical cyclones in a multiresolution ensemble of atmosphere-only and fully coupled global climate models.
Journal of Climate, 35 (16).
pp. 5283-5306.
ISSN 1520-0442
doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0801.1
Baker, A. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-1350
(2022)
Tropical cyclones: global decline in frequency.
Nature Climate Change, 12.
pp. 615-617.
ISSN 1758-6798
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01414-5
Sainsbury, E. M., Schiemann, R. K. H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3095-9856, Hodges, K. I., Baker, A. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-1350, Shaffrey, L. C. and Bhatia, K. T.
(2022)
What governs the interannual variability of recurving North Atlantic tropical cyclones?
Journal of Climate, 35 (12).
pp. 3627-3641.
ISSN 1520-0442
doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0712.1
2021
Baker, A. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-1350, Hodges, K. I., Schiemann, R. K. H. and Vidale, P. L.
(2021)
Historical variability and lifecycles of North Atlantic midlatitude cyclones originating in the tropics.
Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126 (9).
e2020JD033924.
ISSN 2169-8996
doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JD033924
Baldini, J. U.L., Lechleitner, F. A., Breitenbach, S. F.M., van Hunen, J., Baldini, L. M., Wynn, P. M., Jamieson, R. A., Ridley, H. E., Baker, A. H. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2697-1350, Walczak, I. W. and Fohlmeister, J.
(2021)
Detecting and quantifying palaeoseasonality in stalagmites using geochemical and modelling approaches.
Quaternary Science Reviews, 254.
106784.
ISSN 0277-3791
doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106784
2020
Sainsbury, E. M., Schiemann, R. K. H., Hodges, K. I., Shaffrey, L. C., Baker, A. J. and Bhatia, K. T. (2020) How important are post-tropical cyclones for European windstorm risk? Geophysical Research Letters, 47 (18). e2020GL089853. ISSN 0094-8276 doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL089853
Bador, M., Boé, J., Terray, L., Alexander, L. V., Baker, A., Bellucci, A., Haarsma, R., Koenigk, T., Moine, M.-P., Lohmann, K., Putrasahan, D. A., Roberts, C., Roberts, M., Scoccimarro, E., Schiemann, R., Seddon, J., Senan, R., Valcke, S. and Vanniere, B. (2020) Impact of higher spatial atmospheric resolution on precipitation extremes over land in global climate models. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 125 (3). ISSN 2169-8996 doi: https://doi.org/10.1029/2019jd032184
Fabiano, F., Christensen, H. M., Strommen, K., Athanasiadis, P., Baker, A., Schiemann, R. and Corti, S. (2020) Euro-Atlantic weather regimes in the PRIMAVERA coupled climate simulations: impact of resolution and mean state biases on model performance. Climate Dynamics, 54 (11-12). pp. 5031-5048. ISSN 0930-7575 doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-020-05271-w
2019
Roberts, M. J., Baker, A., Blockley, E. W., Calvert, D., Coward, A., Hewitt, H. T., Jackson, L. C., Kuhlbrodt, T., Mathiot, P., Roberts, C. D., Schiemann, R., Seddon, J., Vanniere, B. and Vidale, P. L. (2019) Description of the resolution hierarchy of the global coupled HadGEM3-GC3.1 model as used in CMIP6 HighResMIP experiments. Geoscientific Model Development, 12 (12). pp. 4999-5028. ISSN 1991-9603 doi: https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-4999-2019
Baker, A. J., Schiemann, R., Hodges, K. I., Demory, M.-E., Mizielinski, M. S., Roberts, M. J., Shaffrey, L. C., Strachan, J. and Vidale, P. L. (2019) Enhanced climate change response of wintertime North Atlantic circulation, cyclonic activity and precipitation in a 25 km-resolution global atmospheric model. Journal of Climate, 32 (22). pp. 7763-7781. ISSN 1520-0442 doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0054.1
2015
Baker, A. J., Sodemann, H., Baldini, J. U. L., Breitenbach, S. F. M., Johnson, K. R., van Hunen, J. and Zhang, P. (2015) Seasonality of westerly moisture transport in the East Asian summer monsoon and its implications for interpreting precipitation δ18O. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 120 (12). pp. 5850-5862. ISSN 2169-8996 doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/2014JD022919
2014
Baker, A. J., Mattey, D. P. and Baldini, J. U. L. (2014) Reconstructing modern stalagmite growth from cave monitoring, local meteorology, and experimental measurements of dripwater films. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 392. pp. 239-249. ISSN 0012-821X doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2014.02.036
Last update: 30th January 2019
