Rob Chadwick (Met Office UK)

Future projections of tropical precipitation show large uncertainties at the regional scales relevant to climate change impacts. In order to narrow this uncertainty and produce robust, useable information for climate change adaptation, the mechanisms that drive regional precipitation change in the tropics must first be understood. In particular, the response of the tropical atmospheric circulation to warming is crucial. This seminar will describe results from a number of approaches that have been applied to this problem, including simplified theoretical models and a hierarchy of idealised model simulations.

Brief Biography: Rob completed a PhD at the University of Reading on satellite precipitation observations over Africa and works at the UK Met Office since 2010.Rob is interested in changes in the tropical circulation and precipitation associated with climate change and variability. He has recently been working on novel ways of analysing the Pacific Walker circulation, and on changes to the tropical circulation in an idealised geoengineering model experiment, where CO2 is added, then removed from the atmosphere. He is involved in looking at how tropical climate and precipitation change in the CMIP5 multi-model ensemble, and is active in the Monsoon working group with other members of the Global Water Cycle team.