I’m currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University.
My work explores where and when human-driven changes are most important for clouds. Anthropogenic activities perturb the aerosol environment through changes to emission sources (think: factories, shipping). At the same time, humans drive changes in the land surface (think: deforestation, urbanization). I examine how those combined perturbations to the earth system drive changes in cloud and precipitation properties. This is important for water availability, extreme weather, and the climate system. The interplay of microphysics, dynamics, and radiation involved makes it challenging to untangle the processes driving these aerosol-land-cloud interactions. Every cloud is different, and the balance of processes can be varied even within a single cloud field! However, understanding this variability and its ultimate effects is essential to understanding how we are changing the weather and climate on the planet we live on.
In my research, I use a combination of satellite data, field observations, and cloud-resolving models. I’m interested in how we can use new techniques and advances in computational power to better understand physical processes!
research areas
news
- I've been in Pasadena for the past two days attending the last CAMP2Ex science team meeting! I gave an overarching talk summarizing the highlights of the work our group at CSU has been up to for the past five years since the field campaign.
- I volunteered at CSU Little Shop of Physics today. It was so much fun talking to K-12 students about the physics of the atmosphere!
- I gave a virtual seminar on aerosol breezes to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography's climate journal club.
- Our work on deforestation in Southeast Asia is featured in Eos magazine.
- I was in San Francisco for AGU! I gave a poster on the impacts of deforestation on clouds in Southeast Asia, and delivered a lightning talk on aerosol impacts on cold pools on behalf of Sue.
- You can read our latest preprint in the ESS Open Archive.
- I gave a guest lecture on the fundamentals of aerosol science to graduate-level Thermodynamics and Cloud Physics course at CSU Department of Atmospheric Science.
- I helped give a demonstration and guest lecture on using radiosondes to an undergraduate-level atmospheric science course at CSU.
- I attended a summer school in Pasadena hosted by JPL Center for Climate Sciences and the Keck Institute for Space Science. The theme was Using satellite observations to advance climate models.
- Our team just wrapped up on BACS-II. It was a very successful (and unusually rainy) summer for cold pool sampling!
- Today is the first day of the NSF-sponsored BioAerosols and Convective Storms Phase II (BACS-II). Our team will spend five weeks sampling cold pools using radiosondes and drones to understand how bioaerosols (like pollen) are lofted and distributed by storms. This summer, I'm the operations manager and will coordinate the day-to-day instrumentation and sampling.
- A paper by myself and coauthors was just publised in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. Using a suite of 16 simulations, we explore how different aerosol types and loadings impact cloud development. We then discuss how these changes to the cloud field influence convective transport and aerosol removal processes.
- I passed my preliminary exam and am now officially a Ph.D. candidate!
- A paper I led was just publised in Nature Communications. We introduce the concept of an aerosol breeze, which is a mesoscale circulation driven by horizontal gradients in aerosol loadings. These results emphasize the importance of resolving spatial heterogeneity in assessing aerosol-cloud interactions.
- The CSU Little Shop of Physics was today! I and many other volunteers hosted science demonstrations (including showing off the drones we use for field measurements) for K-12 students.
- I received the Herbert Riehl Memorial Award for the paper 'Aerosol breezes drive cloud and precipitation increases', recently published in Nature Communications. The Riehl award is given annually to a CSU Department of Atmospheric Science student who submits the best manuscript for publication in the past 18 months, as selected by a panel of CSU faculty members.
- I helped out with an outreach event (en español!) at AXIS International Academy. We spoke to kindergarteners about weather, climate, and how we use drone to make measurements of the atmosphere!
- I attended the 103rd AMS Annual Meeting in Denver, CO. I gave a talk on the importance of representing heterogeneity in aerosol spatial distributions when considering aerosol-cloud interactions.
- I was awarded the David L. Dietrich Honorary Scholarship. This scholarship is awarded annually to a CSU Atmospheric Science student who demonstrates outstanding research in the study of aerosols and air quality.