Jennifer Owen

Postgraduate Student

Telephone number: +44(0) 113 34 35605
Email address: ee09jso@leeds.ac.uk
Room: 10.128

Knippertz Working Group

Biography

Project details

Project Title: A seamless approach to assessing model uncertainties in climate projections of severe European windstorm

Supervisors: Dr Peter Knippertz and Professor Doug Parker

Funding: AXA Research Fund

Start date: 1st October 2010

Project Outline

My PhD project will investigate how extratropical cyclones might evolve in a changing climate. When the climate changes, it is generally accepted that storms will tend to track closer to the pole. However, the evolution of the number of cyclones and the intensity distribution is uncertain. This is for a variety of reasons, but at the centre of this discord is the range of climate models used for the simulations. These will each have different intrinsic properties, such as the dynamical core, and different properties that can be altered by the user, such as resolution. This leads to uncertainty in climate predictions for extratropical windstorms over Europe.

The aims of this project are to investigate the quality of the representation of intense winter storms over Europe in atmospheric models, and analyse sources of uncertainty in climate projections of European cyclones.

Qualifications

• MRes Physics of the Earth and Atmosphere, University of Leeds (2010)
• BSc (Hons) Physics with Meteorology, University of Edinburgh (2009)