Project: Thermal Rossby Waves and North Atlantic Climate Variability: Theory, Modelling and Prediction
Supervisors: Remi Teilleux (UoR) & Bablu Sinha (NOC)
Project Description:
This project is about understanding and more accurately predicting how our climate will change from decade to decade – a major topic in environmental science and of great societal interest. In the North Atlantic region, decadal changes in weather and climate are strongly linked to slowly changing ocean temperatures, but the underlying reasons for these temperature changes are not at all well understood. Recent work suggests North Atlantic temperatures might be caused by slowly moving waves known as thermal Rossby waves which “ride” on the north south temperature gradient of the ocean. In this project we will develop the theory of these waves, testing out theoretical predictions of how they propagate and impact ocean temperatures using idealised ocean models with simple geometry and bottom topography, before assessing to what extent these wave processes are present and active in state of the art high resolution climate prediction models.
