Erin Dawkins

Postgraduate Student

Telephone number: +44(0) 113 34 35612
Email address: eeecmd@leeds.ac.uk
Room: 10.126

Biography

Project details

Project title: Retrieval of the global metal layers using satellite limb-scanning spectroscopy

Supervisors: Prof Martyn Chipperfield and Prof John Plane (School of Chemistry)

Funding: NERC

Start date: Jan 2011

Qualifications

• 2010 - MSc (Applied Meteorology and Climatology) - University of Birmingham
• 2008 - MBiolSci (Zoology) - University of Sheffield

Research Interests

Changes in the mesosphere are an important signal of climate change and there is increasing evidence that accurate simulations of changes to the Earth’s climate require models with a well resolved and accurate stratosphere and mesosphere. Metal species in the middle atmosphere offer a unique way of observing this region and of testing the accuracy of climate models in this domain.

Utilising data from the SCIAMACHY and OSIRIS instruments on-board ENVISAT and Odin respectively, this project aims to produce the first satellite-borne observations of metal layers (K, Ca and Fe) originating from meteoroids, that form in the upper mesosphere-lower thermosphere (MLT) region. Work is currently underway in developing an Fe retrieval and good preliminary results have already been obtained using OSIRIS data. The second half of the PhD will focus on the comparison of the retrieved metal datasets with the model output from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM). Model experiments will be performed to investigate reasons for any differences, such as chemistry or model dynamics, with the ultimate aim of improving the model. Finally, climate change simulations will be run to analyse how future climate change will modify these mesosphere metal layers and the impacts that this will have.