Postdoctoral Researcher

Research interests
Convective turbulence (theory, modelling & parametrization);Upscale impacts of small-scale features in the atmosphere (including potential vorticity and local scale-to-scale energy transfer perspectives).
Current researchParametrization of convective turbulence in the convection grey zone (ParaChute: MORPH project)Putting the Morph into CoMorph: adapting convection parametrisation for the hard grey zone.Past researchTerraMaris: The Maritime Continent - driver of the global climate system Multi-fluid modelling of idealized convectionI worked on a novel "multi-fluid" approach to the parametrization of atmospheric convection, attempting to capture the coherent overturning structures of turbulent convection via partitioning the flow into multiple components. The general framework is fully 3D and time-dependent, allowing many of the assumptions made in common "mass flux" convection parametrizations to be avoided. These assumptions are especially problematic in the "convection grey zone" -- a range of model resolutions where convection is partially, but not fully, resolved.Although allowing assumptions to be relaxed, the greater generality of this approach also introduces far greater complexity. We therefore studied the application of multi-fluid modelling to the simplest example of turbulent convection: dry Rayleigh-Bénard convection. Highlights of our findings include:
dry Rayleigh-Bénard convection exhibits similar behaviour in the convection grey zone as full-complexity numerical weather prediction models;a simple 1D, time-dependent, two-fluid model can accurately reproduce the equilibrium buoyancy and momentum transports across 6 orders of magnitude of buoyancy forcing, as well as the correct growth rate of convective instabilities.
This work began during my PhD, supervised by Hilary Weller and Peter Clark; some loose ends were tied up during a short postdoc, where Bob Plant joined for the ride. Both positions were funded by the joint NERC/Met Office ParaCon programme.Teaching and supervisionI have been a classroom demonstrator for multiple undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the Meteorology department, including:
Atmosphere and Ocean Dynamics (2nd year undergraduate);Boundary Layer Meteorology (3rd year undergraduate/Master's);Global Circulation (3rd year undergraduate/Master's);Fluid Dynamics of the Atmosphere and Oceans (Master's).
I have also supervised several student projects:
Elliot McKinnon-Gray (PhD, 2024-present; lead supervised by John Methven, along with Tom Frame, Anne McCabe, and Nigel Roberts);Chase Benoist (MSc, 2024; co-supervised by Mark Muetzelfeldt and Bob Plant);Sangay Penjor (BSc, 2023-24; co-supervised by John Methven);Somrath Kanoksirirath (MSc, 2020; lead supervised by Hilary Weller).
Responsibilities
Co-organizer of departmental Lunchtime Seminars (Jun 2023 - present);Co-organizer of Tropical Research Group (Oct 2022 - present).
Previous responsibilities included co-organizing Mesoscale Group (2019-2021), and helping bring back the Meteorology Department Research Away Day in 2024, after a decade-long hiatus.

Research Interests:

• Convective turbulence (theory, modelling & parametrization);
• Upscale impacts of small-scale features in the atmosphere (including potential vorticity and local scale-to-scale energy transfer perspectives).

Current Research Projects:

• Parametrization of convective turbulence in the convection grey zone (MORPH project, part of the NERC/Met Office ParaChute programme)

Past Research Projects:

• TerraMaris: The Maritime Continent - driver of the global climate system
• Multi-fluid modelling of idealized convection (PhD & short PDRA as part of NERC/Met Office ParaCon programme)

Centaur Publications

Last update: 9th December 2024