Month: October 2018

Dr Paulo Ceppi, Imperial College Research Fellow, Grantham Institute

I am a climate scientist at the Grantham Institute, where I am an Imperial College Research Fellow and Grantham Lecturer in Climate Science.

I obtained my BSc and MSc degrees from ETH Zurich, before gaining a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. I then worked at the University of Reading as a postdoc for three years, before joining Imperial in August 2018.

My work mainly deals with the physical aspects of climate change. One question I’m interested in is, how much will the Earth warm as CO2 levels increase? The answer depends on the strength of climate feedbacks, for example due to changes in clouds, but these feedbacks remain poorly understood. I work with climate models and observations to make progress on this issue. For one of my recent publications on this topic, I received a “Research Output Prize” at the University of Reading in 2018.

Another aspect of my research is concerned with the atmospheric circulation and how it will change as the climate warms. In particular, I am working to understand future changes in the position of the jet streams, which are strong wind currents about 10 km above the surface. These currents have a strong impact on our weather, so understanding their future changes is a question of high economic and societal relevance.