I am broadly interested in polar ocean dynamics, particularly convection, and its role in global climactic changes like a weakening of the overturning circulation and sea ice loss.

My lofty ambitions are to help mitigate these changes by working at the intersection of submesoscale (i.e., fairly small) fluid dynamics and climate science. Failing this, I am at least having fun with tools like the MITgcm and NEMO models.

In my ongoing PhD research, I’m working on understanding the role of convection in setting the structure of the Southern Ocean. In particular, I’m taking a primarily model-based approach to studying how convective plumes might be an overlooked player in the upwelling of ice melt-inducing intermediate waters around Antarctica. My basic motivation is that Earth System Models (ESMs), like those used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), have a hard time with the Southern Ocean; I believe this is in no small part because they are unable to directly represent convective plumes. If we can figure out a way to put accurate convection into ESMs, I hope we can ultimately instil a bit more faith into ESMs’ predictions of future climactic changes.

(My secondary motivation is that ocean convection is just plain cool, see: Stommel, 1962.)

If you’re wondering what I mean by convective plumes, it’s basically this:

If you’re interested, you can check out my PhD proposal here.

My work is part of the EU-funded VERTEXSO project under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Alexander Haumann at LMU Munich and the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI). As a member of the AWI-LMU joint research group for Southern Ocean-Climate Interactions (SO-CLIM), I am fortunate enough to frequently travel across Germany and spend time at both institutions. The only unlucky part is the reliance on Deutsche Bahn.

Relevant interests

• Numerical modelling, including general circulation models and large eddy simulations
• Submesoscale (and smaller) fluid dynamics, especially ocean convection
• Polar oceanography and sea ice
• History and literature around oceanography and polar exploration, e.g.,
  • The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson
  • South by Ernest Shackleton
  • At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft
  • A Farewell to Ice: A Report from the Arctic by Peter Wadhams

In early 2024, I finished my MSc in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta. My focus was deep convection in the Labrador Sea, which I studied using the NEMO ocean model under the supervision of Dr. Paul Myers. A paper on this work, or maybe even two, ought to come out at some point in the not-too-distant future. My background before oceanography was in the tangetially-related field of Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering.