I'm a fourth year Applied Mathematics Ph.D student in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where I'm advised by Peter Huybers. I study the atmosphere's water cycle and how it responds to different forcings on a wide range of timescales.  A few of my research interests are:
I use modern measurements, atmospheric models, and paleoclimate records to examine how rain and snowfall have varied in the past. In order to explain the observations, and to make predictions about future changes, I use of a wide variety of physical models and statistical tools including:
Precipitation in the climate system is by no means an isolated process, and is strongly coupled to ocean and atmosphere dynamics, as well as the land surface. Thus, precipitation feeds back on climate changes on a wide range of timescales.
In the paleoclimate, accumulation of snow is the driver of the ice albedo feedback that permits glacial-interglacial cycles to occur. The presence of glacial-interglacial cycles is strikingly obvious in the paleoclimate record, but our theoretical understanding of them remains limited. Additional couplings emerge on longer timescales as ice sheets grow to cover entire continents -- a feedback between ice accumulation and the mean state of the atmosphere helps to stabilize midlatitude ice sheets, but may ultimately set up the right conditions for their orbitally-induced demise.
During the coming century, changes in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere will alter the radiative balance of the earth, shift seasons, and lead to changes in the availability of water resources to human populations. The hydrologic cycle may be the most profound geopolitical impact of climate change, and thus the most important component of the climate system to understand and predict.
Some of my recent work shows that the dominant cause of variations in many paleoclimate rainfall proxies is the structural shift of water vapor transport. These changes are induced by modified surface boundary conditions of three types: topographic height (e.g., large ice sheets), surface type, and surface temperature. I'm examining these changes using records from the modern day, paleoclimate proxies, high resolution atmospheric models, and simple conceptual box models.
Background:I've previously worked on microfluidics, nonlinear dynamics of complex fluids, classical field theory as an undergraduate, and precision timing/navigation (in that order). I did my undergraduate degree at Reed College (B.A. in Physics, 2007). I go by Andy.CV:PDF.
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