Visiting Research Fellow

Responsibilities:

• Postdoctoral Research Assistant on MAPP (Metrology for Aerosol oPtical Properties)
• Former Lunchtime Seminar chair

Research interests:

• Radiative transfer
• Atmospheric spectroscopy
• The water vapour continuum absorption
• Aerosol direct radiative effects and forcing
• Solar spectral irradiance
• The effect of radiative processes on Earth's energy budget and climate change
• Fourier Transform spectroscopy
• Radiation model development

Research projects:

Current project:

• I am currently a PDRA on the EU-funded Metrology for Aerosol oPtical Properties (MAPP) project, in which I am working to determine how advances in observations of aerosol optical properties translate to reduced uncertainty in aerosol direct radiative effect and radiative forcing, using the UK Met Office SOCRATES radiative transfer code in a Monte Carlo framework.

Former projects:

• Previously I worked as a PDRA on the ASPIC (Advanced SPectroscopy for improved characterisation of the near-Infrared water vapour Continuum) project, focused on analysis of laboratory data from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, looking at the water vapour continuum in near-infrared atmospheric windows at 1.6 and 2.1 microns, in addition to development of the RFM-DISORT high-resolution radiative transfer code.
• My PhD was funded by the NERC SCENARIO Doctoral Training Partnership with CASE sponsorship from the National Physical Laboratory. The primary aim was to derive the water vapour continuum between 1-5 microns using spectroscopic measurements of the atmosphere. This phenomenon is most important in the "atmospheric windows", where line absorption is comparatively weak, and as such has importance in both modelling of the Earth's energy budget, but also in remote sensing applications. In addition, one of the aims of the project is to accurately constrain the solar spectral irradiance in this region, since there is a significant (~10%) discrepancy between current sets of measurements, and to quantify both of these effects in terms of Earth's energy budget.

Research groups:

• Radiation Group

Publications

• Jonathan Elsey, Tom Gardiner, Marc D. Coleman, Kaah P. Menang, Keith P. Shine: Atmospheric observations of the water vapour continuum in the near-infrared windows. Accepted to Atmospheric Measurement Technology Discussions (2019) doi:10.5194/amt-2019-403
• Jonathan Elsey, Tom Gardiner, Marc D. Coleman, Keith P .Shine: Can measurements of the near-infrared solar spectral irradiance be reconciled? A new ground-based assessment between 4000-10000 cm-1. Published in Geophysical Research Letters (2017) doi:10.1002/2017GL073902
• Anna A. Simonova, Igor V. Ptashnik, Jonathan Elsey, Robert A. McPheat, Keith P. Shine, Kevin M. Smith: Water vapour self-continuum in near-visible IR absorption bands: Measurements and semiempirical model of water dimer absorption, Published in Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer (2022) doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2021.107957
• Lara O. Anisman, Katy L. Chubb, Jonathan Elsey, Ahmed Al-Refaie, Quentin Changeat, Sergei N. Yurchenko, Jonathan Tennyson, Giovanna Tinetti: Cross-sections for heavy atmospheres: H2O continuum, Published in Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer (2022) doi:10.1016/j.jqsrt.2021.108013

Presentations and awards

• Best Oral Presentation, 15th AMS Conference on Atmospheric Radiation (2018), Vancouver, Canada
• University of Reading Department of Meteorology PhD Poster Presentation Prize (2016)
• Poster presentation at the 2019 Gordon Research Conference for Radiation and Climate, Lewiston, ME, USA
• Oral presentation at the International Radiation Symposium 2016, Auckland, New Zealand
• Poster presentation at the EGU General Assembly 2017, Vienna
• Poster, Royal Meteorological Society South-East Centre meeting, University of Reading, UK (2016, invited)
• Oral presentation, SCENARIO Conference 2016 with the University of Oklahoma
• Oral presentation, Earth Observation and Satellite Applications Workshop, University of Surrey (2016, invited)
• Oral presentation, NPL Postgraduate Institute divisional visit (2016)
• Oral presentation, Quo Vadis, Department of Meteorology (2016)
• Oral presentation at the RMetS Student Conference 2015, Birmingham (with full funding awarded)
• Poster presentation, SCENARIO Conference 2015

Last update: 21st March 2024