I lead the CLimate Extremes and Societal Impacts (CLESI) research group here at the University of Waikato. We research extreme weather events, their impacts on society and the role of anthropogenic climate change.

Within our group, I lead three 3-year research programmes. I also have a range of other Masters projects available for motivated students (note I do not currently have the capacity to supervise any additional PhD students).

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Project 1 - Marsden Standard Grant: "Could land aridification supercharge summertime warming rates in a maritime climate like Aotearoa?"

Land warms faster than oceans as global temperatures rise, particularly in regions where the land is also becoming drier. Because of our surrounding oceans, existing climate projections point to Aotearoa warming more slowly than global-mean temperatures. Yet, recent observational studies show rapid warming occurring across Aotearoa in the mid-to-late summer. We hypothesize that land aridification is creating land-atmosphere feedbacks which accelerate warming over Aotearoa at spatial scales smaller than existing models can meaningfully simulate. This project will use an unprecedented network of soil moisture and climate observations to disentangle the physical mechanisms responsible for these recent warming trends. We will also perform Aotearoa’s first land surface model intercomparison assessment to understand what uncertainty in existing climate projections exists due to unrealistic interactions between the land and atmosphere, as well as develop a suite of new model simulations to specifically quantify the role of land-atmosphere feedbacks for selected hot summers of the past. Finally, we will develop observationally constrained, process-informed projections of unprecedented hot-dry summer extremes that could affect Aotearoa by the middle of the twenty-first century.

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Project 2 - EQC University Research Programme: "How misleading are past experiences when planning for future record-shattering rainfall extremes?"

This project will assess the lower bounds of adaptation required to withstand physically plausible but unprecedented extreme rainfall events over Aotearoa, and which locations should expect events in the coming decades that are well beyond the experiences of recent memory. We will (1) examine historical rainfall data from hundreds of station observations alongside high-quality gridded rainfall products, (2) sequentially assess the most severe rainfall events to have occurred over recent decades in different parts of the country, and (3) produce nationwide maps with quantitative estimates of the relative rarity of these most extreme rainfall experiences over the different decadal time slices.

We will then integrate these new observational insights with high-resolution estimates of future intensification of extreme rainfall to quantify physically plausible, record-shattering rainfall events capable of occurring across Aotearoa within the next three decades. This information will then be used to curate local storyline scenarios, so to synthesize the risks associated with an unprecedented future rainfall event for individual cities and regions.

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Project 3 - MBIE Smart Ideas: "Physically plausible record-shattering drought events in a warming Aotearoa"

Understanding the potential risks associated with unprecedented future droughts is thus a crucial step towards ensuring our economy remains resilient to a rapidly warming climate.

Recent overseas research has highlighted the potential for record-shattering extreme events to occur in the presence of global warming rates expected over the next three decades: these are events which exceed previous long-standing records by significant margins. Such extremes often have substantial social and economic impacts, due to a tendency for systems to adapt to the highest-intensity events experienced during a lifetime, but rarely higher.

Building on successful research looking into the already-elevated risks of witnessing extreme meteorological drought events in Aotearoa, this project will interrogate data from three very large regional climate model ensembles (each with thousands of model years), coupled with guidance from historical observations and mātauranga Māori, to identify physically plausible, record-shattering drought events capable of occurring over Aotearoa within the next three decades. By quantifying locally specific estimates of the upper bound of future drought-related hazards, as well as contextualising how these potential events relate to past experiences, this project will resolve the adaptation requirements needed for rural communities and the primary export sector to thrive in a warming Aotearoa.