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Tim Osborn: Students

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I have been involved in the supervision of the research students listed below, either as the main supervisor or a member of the supervision panel.

  • PhD students (as main/joint supervisor)

    • In progress:


    • Complete:

      • Guangzhi Xu (2012-2016, jointly supervised with Adrian Matthews). Guangzhi is studying the large-scale hydrological cycle of the tropics, using instrumental satellite and re-analysis data. He is assessing the uncertainty in some of the components of the water budget, such as the atmospheric transport of water and the water balance of the land surface, and will then consider how these components change with the seasonal cycle and associated with tropical climate modes.
        Subsequent career: Researcher at Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China.

      • Jonathan Barichivich (2009-2014, jointly supervised with Keith Briffa). Jonathan is funded by CONICYT to further our understanding of the interactions between temperature, drought, the boreal forest and the carbon cycle.
        Subsequent career: Researcher at LSCE, Paris, France; Researcher at University of Leeds, UK; Researcher Universidad Austral de Chile and Center for Climate and Resilience Research, Chile.

      • Rita Yu (2010-2013). European droughts under climate change: projections and uncertainties.
        Rita was funded by AXA to investigate possible future scenarios of drought across Europe, including the spread of results from different scenarios, difference climate models, and different metrics or definitions of drought. She simulated changes in runoff with the MacPDM hydrological model and used these to compare the changes in hydrological drought with changes in meterological drought from the Standardised Precipitation Index.
        Subsequent career: Researcher at University of Washington, USA.

      • Jessica Vial (2008-2012). Climate model simulations of winter northern hemisphere atmospheric blocking: statistical assessment, dynamical perspective, regional impacts and future change.
        Jessica investigated the links between atmospheric blocking, extreme weather events and climate change. She evaluated the ability of general-circulation-model-based climate models to simulate the occurrence and characteristics of blocking circulation patterns over the Northern Hemisphere, and diagnosed whether these models predict any significant changes in blocking characteristics under greenhouse-gas-induced climate change. She then considered the potential links between sudden warming of the stratosphere and the occurrence of blocking.
        Subsequent career: Researcher at Laboratoire de Meteorologie Dynamique (LMD), Paris, France; Researcher at Columbia University, New York, USA; Researcher at LMD, Paris, France.

      • Simon Busby (2005-2010, jointly supervised with Keith Briffa). Simulating patterns and causes of North American drought: a case study using the HADCM3 general circulation model.
        Simon used instrumental data, proxy data and model simulations to study the links between drought over the US and teleconnections, and how these have varied during the last 1000 years, possibly in response to radiative forcings.
        Subsequent career: Further and Higher Education course development, City College Norwich.

      • Carol McSweeney (2003-2007). Daily rainfall variability at point and areal scales: evaluating simulations of present and future climate.
        Carol had a NERC CASE studentship with the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) as the non-academic partner, with contributions from Nick Reynard at CEH. Carol investigated how the statistical characteristics of precipitation, including its variability and extremes, depend upon the spatial scale being considered. She applied her results to the evaluation of climate model simulations with small samples of raingauge observations (thus converting behaviour between the point scale of the raingauges and the area-averaged scale of climate model grid boxes). Carol also considered whether the spatial coherence of future precipitation might be different to the present-day climate, and how this might modify the relationships that relate behaviour at point and area-averaged scales in the future.
        Subsequent career: Researcher at University of Oxford, UK; Scientist at Met Office, Exeter, UK.

      • Amanda Townsend (2002-2007, jointly supervised with Jan Janacek and Jean Palutikof). Tracking the time-dependent evolution of extremes under climate change.
        Amanda investigated the use of statistical extreme value analysis to identify changes in extreme temperature and precipitation observed in UK climate records. In particular, she used extreme value analysis that including time and other variables as covariates, to investigate changes through time without violating the assumption of stationarity that is usually necessary when applying extreme value theory.
        Subsequent career: Teacher at Norwich High School for Girls.

      • Craig Wallace (1999-2003, jointly supervised with Mick Kelly). Variability in the annual cycle of temperature and atmospheric circulation.
        Craig investigated the annual cycle of temperature and atmospheric circulation, in observations and climate model simulations. Two specific foci were how the annual temperature cycle changes in response to greenhouse gas and tropospheric sulphate aerosol forcing, and the driving mechanisms of the European monsoon (a period of weakened westerly flow into Europe during late spring, followed by the "return of the westerlies" in June).
        Subsequent career: Researcher at UEA; Knowledge Exchange Coordinator for NERC Programmes at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK; Researcher at UEA.

  • PhD students (as member of supervisory panel)

    • In progress:
      • Rhosanna Jenkins (2014-ongoing, main supervisor Rachel Warren). Assessing and managing climate-related risks in the Tana River Basin, Kenya.

    • Complete:
      • Ian Simpson (2007-2012). Ian investigating the variability of UK precipitation at a range of space and time scales during recent decades and centuries.
      • Richard Cornes (2006-2010). Richard extended our record of North Atlantic and European atmospheric circulation by developing records from early meteorological data in Paris and near London.
      • Huy Luong Quang (2004-2009). Huy undertook research in the areas of climate change impacts and sustainable development and their link with socio-economic scenarios.
      • Saffron O'Neil (2004-2008). Saffron investigated the relevance of using the vulnerability of world "icons" to climate change as a tool for defining dangerous climate change and communicating climate change impacts to the public.
      • Stephen Blenkinsop (2001-2005). Stephen investigated changes in the variability and extremes of observed temperature and precipitation over the UK, and related them to variations in atmospheric circulation.
      • Matt Livermore (2000-2005). Matt investigating the impact on health and energy use of future changes in extreme temperatures across Europe.
      • Tom Melvin (1999-2004). Tom investigated empirical and model-based methods of removing trends related to tree age from tree-ring data (standardisation), to allow the reconstruction of multi-century climate changes. He identified many problems and improvements to existing standardisation methods, including the bias at the ends of the records that may explain some of the recent decline in tree-growth relative to climate.
      • Peter Thorne (1998-2001). Peter investigated the detectability of natural and anthropogenic climate change signals in the 3D (latitude, longitude, altitude) temperature field of the troposphere and stratosphere, using optimal detection/regression techniques.
      • Tim Mitchell (1997-2000). Tim investigated the behaviour of the "pattern-scaling" technique for generating climate change scenarios, testing whether spatial and seasonal changes in mean precipitation and some of its higher order statistics can be related linearly to globally and annually averaged temperature change.
      • Byoung-Choel Choi (1997-2000). Byoung investigated the links between Eurasian snow cover, the ENSO phenomenon, and the Asia summer monsoon, using an empirical approach and with a view to assessing the potential for seasonal forecasting of the monsoon.

  • MSc and MSci students (as main supervisor)

    • In progress:

    • Complete:
      • Aminah Salim (2016). Extratropical influences on Asian monsoon rainfall
      • Roshni Manoharan Nair Sudha (2016). Drought impacts over India avoided by the Paris INDC pledges
      • Chris Barrell (2014). Projecting changing snow in Scotland with climate change
      • Johana Romera Alvarez (2013) Precipitation extremes in the Andean Region in Colombia: annual and seasonal variability associated with El Nino Southern Oscillation in observed data and in a future climate scenario
      • Kate Robinson (2011, jointly with Keith Briffa). Examining evidence for a persistently positive North Atlantic Oscillation during the Medieval Climate Anomaly.
      • Thea Turkington (2011). Future drought in Central America: a comparison of an aggressive mitigation scenario with the SRES A1B scenario using the Standardized Precipitation Index.
      • Fernando Iglesias (2011, jointly with Naomi Vaughan). Investigating geoengineering solutions to meet the 2 degC target.
      • Richard Pope (2011). What is the quality/scientific credibility of the Past Weather Code data from the Integrated Surface Data dataset (1973-2008) and can it be used to detect global weather patterns and natural oscillations?
      • Guangzhi Xu (2011). Guangzhi analysed the empirical relationships between Indian Ocean tropical cyclones and the Indian Ocean dipole of sea surface temperature variability.
      • Philippa Beard (2010). Hourly precipitation observations over the UK: diurnal cycles and changes in intensity.
      • Jamie Wilson (2010). Evaluating climate model projections using recent observed trends in global mean temperature.
      • Abdullkarim Almaashi (2010). Assessment of climate extremes in Saudi Arabia, 1980 to 2009.
      • Dorcas Masisi (2009). Dorcas used my ClimGen software application to explore the uncertainty in future precipitation changes over southern Africa. She then used the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) as a metric of drought occurrence to estimate possible changes in drought frequency in the future.
      • Steve Jones (2008). Steve evaluated the performance of GCM-based climate models at simulating present-day atmospheric circulation in the Northern Hemisphere, and the use of performance metrics to weight different GCMs when combining multiple models to make future projections of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation index.
      • Rita Yu (2007, jointly supervised with Rachel Warren). Rita assessed uncertainty in future European drought occurrence under a range of different climate model projections, and evaluating the benefits (in terms of drought risk) of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations to avoid larger changes in climate.
      • Rakia Meister (2006). Rakia used a number of multi-century simulations with the HadCM3 climate model to investigate the spatial variability of sea level changes over the last 500 years, and specifically to consider whether a sub-sample of sea level data (chosen to reflect the location of tide-gauge records) can provide an accurate estimate of the actuall globally-averaged sea level.
      • Carol McSweeney (2003). Carol used the SDSM statistical downscaling model to generate future time series of daily precipitation for two catchments in the UK, compared her results with those of a regional climate model, and used them to drive hydrological streamflow models.
      • Yumi Goto (1999). Yumi used the Hamburg LSG ocean general circulation model coupled to a simple statistical atmosphere model, to investigate the response of the thermohaline circulation to closing the Drake Passage or opening the Panama Isthmus.
      • Cecilia Hellstrom (1997, jointly supervised with David Viner). Cecilia evaluated the simulation of daily weather circulation types in the Mediterranean region by a coupled climate model.
Page last rebuilt: 8 Mar 2024