I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, on modelling climate of 35 Million years ago. This point marks the transition from the warm greenhouse climate of the Eocene, to the beginning of an icehouse climate in the Oligocene. I am investigating the influence of greenhouse gas cooling upon the ocean’s meridional overturning circulation. Around this time, ocean gateways around Antarctica also began to open, creating the beginnings of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This change in ocean circulation may also have contributed to the cooling of Antarctic climate. Many aspects of the ocean circulation at this time remain poorly understood, and I hope to better explain the circulation using coupled climate models.
In 2015 I completed my PhD at the Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney. My thesis is about the north-south asymmetry in global warming, and how ocean dynamics contribute to this asymmetry. The first part of my project involved climate simulations with and without an Antarctic Circumpolar Current, using the climate model CSIRO Mk3L. I then looked at how the asymmetry changes when moving to higher ocean model resolution, using an eddy-permitting coupled climate model. I also examined ways in which the bathymetry influenced the ocean dynamics.
