Specialty

Heat transfer, surface-atmosphere interactions, permafrost, ice sheets, climate monitoring and modeling.

Research Interests

Current interests focus on monitoring and modeling the earth’s climate in cold regions.  One approach I use involves the measurement and interpretation of high-precision temperatures in permafrost and in polar ice sheets.  Responsible for the development of the DOI/GTN-P Deep Borehole Array used to monitor the thermal state of permafrost in arctic Alaska, and for the associated DOI/GTN-P Climate-Station Network used to monitor changes in surface environmental conditions in the same region.  High resolution climate modeling is performed to better understand the processes behind the changes detected by the observing networks and to potentially project future conditions.  Temperature measurements made in the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets are used to reconstruct the magnitude of past surface temperature changes in these regions using geophysical inverse methods (borehole paleothermometry).  Side interests include modeling wind fields over complex terrain using the WRF mesoscale weather prediction system.