Research

PhD research projects:

1. Influence of land-climate interactions on Snowball Earth habitability

I assessed one way that ice-covered planets, including Earth in its “snowball” state, could host surface photosynthetic life: maintaining surface liquid water at the end of long narrow seas, analogous to the modern Red Sea. In particular, inland seas surrounded by snow-free, net-sublimating land are protected from wipe-out by land-glacier invasion, and at warmer surface temperatures, they are additionally protected from annihilation from sea glaciers by the geometry of the narrow bay.

Using a computer model, we simulate the how the climate would respond as a complete system to different changes that would increase surface temperature. Lowering land surface reflectivity, or albedo, drives concentrated warming over land, while increasing CO2 warms relatively evenly across the globe. We’re finding that albedo plays an important role in how viable these inland seas could be as refugia not just because it influences surface temperature, but also because it influences global circulation and precipitation patterns. This work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Read the preprint here: Ocean surrounded by desert land could support photosynthetic life on Snowball Earth.

2. Quantifying structural uncertainty in the terrestrial carbon cycle

With other graduate students, postdocs, and faculty from across the UW Atmospheric Sciences Department, as part of an informal model intercomparison group (MIP), I aim to quantify structural uncertainty stemming from our representation of the carbon cycle. We also plan to perform a similar set of experiments to test parametric uncertainty within and across models. Alongside these experiments, I have been investigating the influence of adding carbon cycle complexity within one model. This work is funded by the UW Program on Climate Change.

~~~

Masters research:

Beautiful Days in the Neighborhood: Land–Atmosphere Interactions as Drivers of Forest Expansion

In my masters research, I investigated how land-atmosphere interactions could lead to faster forest expansion. The study investigated whether the emergence of forest could influence the way water and energy are exchanged between the land and atmosphere in a way that impacts nearby growing conditions and subsequent forest expansion. We used a computer model to simulate a climate with and without forest establishment in a way that resembles what we know happened in the past and tested the response of plants surrounding the forest to the two different climates. We found that a forest is indeed able to spur neighboring plant growth merely by coming into existence. Specifically, forest establishment can bring better growing conditions to plants adjacent to it by warming the air and altering nearby circulation and cloud cover. This work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

~~~

Before coming to graduate school, I worked in science communication at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and at Climate Central. I'm particularly proud of being part of the broader impacts team for the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) Project and Climate Central's Climate-Friendly Car Guide as well as the Shum Show. I've also written about how we communicate as scientists.