About
Informal info about me.
News
Following our paper on the Northern Hemisphere stationary waves, we turned MiMA's focus onto the Southern Hemisphere. Interestingly, some adjustments had to be made to make that hemisphere more realistic, and we again found that full blown climate models' errors in the tropics lead to errors all the way to Antarctica. Read the paper online here.
Our paper looking at tropical convection over Northern Australia's Darwin region has been accepted for publication at the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. We were running up to 145m horizontal resolution simulations with the UK Met Office's Unified Model and up to 444m resolution with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. In contrast to most others, we ran the simulations during a time when nothing special happened, and were amazed at how badly both models are doing in terms of simulating everyday weather. Thanks to Todd Lane, Claire Vincent, Stu Webster, Scott Wales and Valentin Louf for all of their inputs. The paper is available here or you can read the (non peer reviewed) submitted version of the paper here.
The Sydney Morning Herald published a short piece about my teaching and why you should study climate. The (even shorter) answer: You'll learn useful things for the rest of your career!
We just published this exciting piece of work about the climate change impact of the Montreal Protocol. That Protocol is the only treaty ever to be ratified by all nations on Earth, and was designed to combat the ozone hole (which it does).
Interestingly, it turns out that by coincidence it is also the most effective treaty on greenhouse gas emissions in history. There is a beautiful video done by the Australian Academy of Science about the paper and a short video teaser made by myself. The paper is available for free online here.
I am excited to be an invited speaker at the Dynamics and Variability Model Intercomparison Project (DynVarMIP) workshop on Atmospheric circulation in a changing climate in Madrid, Spain. The workshop will focus on atmospheric dynamics in climate prediction and I will be talking about stratosphere-troposphere coupling and its role in surface weather predictability.
We have an exciting opportunity for a fully funded PhD scholarship with Prof. Steven Sherwood, Prof. Tim Duty and myself at the interface between climate, physics and maths. Deadline 21 July 2019. For more details, click the banner!
After a four-year absence I am very excited to come back to the Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics of the American Meteorological Society. It will be great to catch up with that community and hopefully have some of those great interactions this conference is so famous for.
After months of preparation, my class on
We're finally going to the place we are all so obsessed with - Darwin, NT. Why are we obsessed with this place? We're using the radar data all the time, and running high-resolution models to study convection in and around Darwin.
Me in particular, as I will be giving a talk about the performance of the UK Unified Model and the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. Of course, performance as in "compared to the Darwin radar". So it's about time we're visiting. Will be hot and humid though...
Excited to go to the SPARC GA - if it's only half as good as the last in New Zealand, it'll be epic. My poster will be about the work with Thomas Reichler on Sudden Stratospheric Warmings. It can be previewed here.
The official close down of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science is happening in Canberra. I was be there to let people "fly" into my model simulations in virtual reality. Photos of the event here.
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science is coming to an end but we are doing down under full throttle with the last Convection Group Workshop at the University of Melbourne, were I will be one of the few researchers outside the Bureau of Meteorology to present results from the Unified Model explicit convection model.
Just arrived, and already teaching a full module of the UNSW Fundamentals of Atmospheric Science class. Gettin' right in there!
After a few turbulent weeks I have arrived at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. I am very excited to commence my new position as a lecturer in climate dynamics at the Climate Change Research Centre.
The idealised climate model framework Isca is now fully launched with the final publication of our paper, freely available here. I have also written a short, more philosophical article about the benefits of open source, version control, and idealised climate models in The Conversation here. Feel free to share and even comment if you like.
Our new paper about the relative roles of Rossby waves and nonconservative processes has been published online in JAS. You can read it here.
I will finally be able to present my own climate model MiMA at a conference in person. So far, Ed Gerber has done an amazing job at representing our work and MiMA, and other MiMA users presented as well, but I couldn't make it to the relevant conferences yet. This is going to change at the end of the month, were I will be giving a talk at the Understanding and Modelling Atmospheric Processes (UMAP) meeting, which is also known as the second Pan-GASS meeting.
I am excited to have been invited to give a presentation about the uses of 3D visualisation in research. I'll give the talk to the plenary during the annual workshop of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science in Canberra, October 29 - November 1.
My newest scientific visualisation video uses YouTube's 360 degree capabilities, and brings the viewer around, above, and even into three of the September 2015 Hurricanes. It's very high resolution, so be sure to be on WiFi, and don't forget to move around with your mouse or phone/tablet! See it here. Tip: if it's too fast, you can hit "pause" and then have a 360-degree look around.
After the devastating September Hurricanes in the Caribbean (see post below), I have accelerated a project I had in mind for some time now: Adding Ocean basin domains to my live weather regions. These domains are the Tropical Atlantic and the North Western Tropical Pacific. As Northern Hemisphere Hurricane season slowly comes to an end, I will probably switch to their Southern Hemisphere counterparts in the near future.
I have made an animation incorporating Harvey, Irma, Jose, Katia, Lee, and Maria. This runs from August 20 to September 30 2017, and can be seen in my movie section or directly on my YouTube channel.
I have now uploaded my first virtual reality rendering of my scientific model output. It works in the browser by navigating with the mouse, or with Google Cardboard on any mobile phone. Have a look here. A small tip: If you are using an iPhone, go to the sharing icon, hit "Add to Home Screen", and then open it as a normal App - that way, the annoying address bar will disappear.
I have been invited to give a talk at the Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) of the University of New South Wales.
My talk is entitled "Stratosphere vs Troposphere: A Dance of Scales", and will take place on 26 July. If you happen to be around, come, see the talk, have a coffee, and be merry.
I am happy to announce that our paper Untangling the annual cycle of the tropical tropopause layer with an idealized moist model has been published online on the Journal of Climate website at DOI 10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0127.1.
The paper introduces the Model of an idealized Moist Atmosphere (MiMA), which closes the gap between idealized dry or gray radiation schemes and full-blown General Circulation Models by including full radiative transfer, but neglecting clouds, chemistry, and ocean circulation. It also explores the annual cycle of temperature in the upper tropical troposphere/lower stratosphere, and shows how midlatitude baroclinicity plays an important role in setting up the observed structure.
As part of our efforts to improve the performance of convection permitting simulations with the UK MetOffice's Unified Model, I will be taking part at the 2nd Convective Scale Modelling Workshop 12-14 June. I will also visit Geoff Vallis' climate dynamics research group at Exeter University, and discuss some projects related to global climate dynamics. I will also try and pick up a brand new copy of the 2nd edition of "Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics", which contains a few of my scientific visualisations.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology asked me to present my most recent results on stratosphere-troposphere coupling and possible applications to seasonal forecasting. I've spent a very interesting day at the Bureau, thanks to everyone for some exciting discussions!
I am proud to be one of the worldwide two candidates the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) has chosen to promote for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Award for Young Scientist. The candidacy is based on my latest publication and CV. You can read more and a interview with me in the WCRP series on promising future leaders in climate science.
I've written a small piece about the Dos and Don'ts in scientific visualisation, with the example of my newest addition to my website, Weather Alive. If you'd like to know more about how such things can be done, go have a read.
The School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment Sciences as invited me as speaker to their seminar series. I'll try to do my best and give a very general talk, while still presenting some of my recent research. Of course, there will also be lots of animations. See the announcement here.
One of my pv_atmos videos (Fly Me) has been chosen as one of six to showcase the power of their software on the main page. Have a look here.
After five years in the US, I am excited to start my new position at the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences, where I will be looking at convection over the Maritime Continent together with Assoc. Prof. Todd Lane.
I am happy to visit Prof. Geoff Vallis in Exeter, UK, for a week before going off to new adventures. The group in Exeter has become an important user of my climate models, so it is great to catch up on new ideas and applications of these models, and also further developing projects.
Prof. Ed Gerber will present a talk about my work at the SPARC Workshop on "Stratospheric Change and its Role for Climate Prediction“ (SHARP) The workshop focuses on recent research in stratospheric dynamics, stratosphere-troposphere coupling, and stratospheric water vapor and ozone.
I am thrilled that Kitware,the developer of the visualization software ParaView, will feature no less than three of my movies and two pictures at their booth at SC15 in Austin, TX, November 15-20 2015. Needless to say, all of the five visualizations are done with pv_atmos, my personal code package.
After a year of absence, I am a Princeton Research Scholar again, but this time with my office in the middle of Greenwich Village, Manhattan. I'll be working with Geoff Vallis at Exeter, but also Ed Gerber at NYU on atmospheric dynamics, seasonal forecasting, and climate change.
One of my visualizations, which I have on my website here, has been chosen as Imaggeo on Mondays featured photo. This blog belongs to the European Geosciences Union. It's an honor to provide a numerical rendering of the stratosphere to a blog that is about beautiful photography in geosciences!
I'm looking forward to my third meeting, with my fifth oral and two first poster presentations this year. I have the great honor to give the last talk before the banquet on Wednesday, and promise to do something special for the occasion... So, hope to see lots of familiar faces at the conference, and why not stop by at my posters on Tuesday and Thursday, and come and hear (and see) my talk on Wednesday. Oh, and to round off the week, I'll also be chairing the first morning session on Friday. See you there!
After attending (and talking at) the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, I'll be visiting a few great labs in Europe, and give seminar talks at Freie Universität Berlin, Max-Planck-Institut für Meteorologie Hamburg, and Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique Paris. Thanks to those institutions for their invitation, I am excited and looking forward to lots of interesting discussions!
Just got word that I'll be giving a talk at this year's European Geosciences Union's General Assembly in Vienna. I'll have to get up early though - first talk of the first session of the first day!
Our little son Simon Evan is born! Of course, he's the cutest baby in the world, and I'll take a little time off to dwell in our new life. *Wolke sieben*
Come and see my three talks at the American Meteorological Society's Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. I'll be explaining (and showing off) my visualization software pv_atmos on Monday, 5 January 4:30PM, Room 129B. On Tuesday, 6 January 9:00AM, Room 212A, I'll be discussing my new simple GCM, MiMA, and my work on stratospheric water vapor. Finally, I'll give my last talk on Thursday, 8 January 2:15PM, Room 212BC, and show idealized climate change simulations about the relative importance of stratospheric versus tropospheric effects in the total atmospheric response. Looking forward to many interesting interactions!
Just like for SPARC 2014, I have created a one minute trailer for my appearance at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. One of my three talks will be about my visualization package pv_atmos, and I compiled some of my best visualizations into a movie. You can find it on my visualization page or directly on my YouTube channel. Isn't science beautiful? See you in Phoenix!
I am visiting the University of Exeter, UK, during the first week of December. Beautiful city, beautiful people, beautiful science (and of course, beautiful drinks too). We'll be working on some exciting new projects - stay tuned!
Thanks to everyone at ETH who came to my talk, and also my visualization workshop. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Happy visualizing!
Our newest paper has been published in Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres (JGR Atmospheres). The article describes a realistic way of including stratospheric dynamics in a simple dry GCM with Newtonian damping. More importantly, it discusses the effects of various stratospheric setups in such models on the frequency of Stratospheric Sudden Warmings (SSWs), which are an important feature of stratosphere-troposphere interaction. You can access it here.
My visualization package pv_atmos has received a major facelift.
Version 2.0 introduces new subpackage names pv_atmos.basic and pv_atmos.grids, some re-arrangement between the packages, and new functions. I have made this major update because I think it makes more sense, and it being available to anyone on pypi, I think these changes make a lot of sense. Try it out today! And remember to read and cite my publication about pv_atmos.
One of the students from my ParaView workshop earlier this year in Melbourne, Australia, has created an amazing movie showing the ozone hole. The movie is not only beautiful (including the music), but it shows such important science in such a nice way! Good job Kane Stone, more of this! The movie can be watched on vimeo, and some more description can be found here.
After over three years being a Princeton Tiger, I have arrived in Manhattan to start my new position at Courant Institute, New York University. Thank you very much Princeton and all the people at AOS/GFDL for memorable years full of enjoyable encounters and good science!
My movies section has just been updated to include my newest creation, this time ocean science related. The movie shows anthropogenic (human-made) CO2 concentrations in the worlds' oceans, dives into the deep of the Atlantic, and flies over the top of Mauna Loa to go and take a look at Antarctica.
The pictures and videos of this year's Art of Science competition are online. My contribution is listed in the videos section, and can be watched there, in the 3D part of my movies section, or following the official Princeton Youtube channel here.
Princeton has also created a compilation of all winner movies 2014, which can be seen here.
Today my visualizations make up the cover of Princeton University's website. Also included some of my pictures and movies. Go to the article here.
The guys from The Research Bazaar invited me for a small discussion about the recognition of programming skills in academia, based on my article about pv_atmos earlier this month. The 30 minute interview can be seen here.
My open source paper describing the the visualization routines I have developed for my 3D renderings has been published. It's open access, and includes detailed descriptions of how to make it work, where to get the code, and how to run the example files. Have a look.
After winning last year's Art of Science competition, I will be among the finalists this year as well. This time, instead of a picture, I submitted a video. The winners will be announced at the opening ceremony on May 8th.
Our paper about self-consistent simulations of radio frequency heating of fusion plasmas in very general geometries has been published in Fusion Science and Technology. You can read it here.
I am excited to finally make it to the Southern Hemisphere for the SPARC General Assembly in Queenstown, New Zealand. You can find a 44-second teaser for my poster in the media section.
Our paper about the maintenance of the stratospheric structure in an idealized GCM has been published in Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. It discusses how to improve the Newtonian cooling term in simple GCMs and investigates the origin of the seasonal cycle in temperature in the tropical tropopause layer. You can find it here.
In the October issue of Popular Science, you can find my little visual work on page 30. This comes out of Princeton's Art of Science competition that I won (see earlier news). In this particular article, I am who they refer to as "a scientist from Princeton University"...
My contribution has received the award of best picture, and the prize was presented by Pablo Debenedetti, Dean of Research. My thanks to the distinguished panel of judges: Katherine Bussard, Peter C. Bunnell curator of the Princeton Art Museum; David Dobkin, Dean of the Faculty; Emmet Gowin, Professor of Visual Arts, Emeritus; Paul Muldoon, Howard G.B. Clark '21 University Professor in the Humanities; and Shirley M. Tilghman, President. Visit the official Art of Science gallery.
My latest co-authored paper about sawtooth control in ITER has been published online. It compares results from measurements and various codes, including my code package SCENIC. Check it out.
One of my co-authored articles made it into the Best Articles of the Year 2012 selection of Physics of Plasmas. The paper highlights the importance of finite orbit widths in radio frequency heating scenarios. More information here.
The Swiss National Science Foundation just decided to award me with their Advanced Researcher's fellowship. Ranked highest of six levels, predicate "outstanding". Cheers to that!