Research

 I am a Ph.D. student under the supervision of Seb Swart (sebswart.com) and Marcel du Plessis (mduplessis.com). I am passionate about climate change, having graduated from the University of Exeter with a Master of Mathematics where I studied geophysical (and some astrophysical) fluid dynamics, as well as completed a thesis on overturning ocean circulation and Stommel’s box model under Prof. Geoffrey Vallis. I have previous climate-related academic and corporate experience, having worked as a Lab Intern to develop teaching material with a Coriolis tank and as an Environmental Consultant to help develop an algorithm to quantify companies’ carbon footprints with Blue Marble Environmental Partnerships Ltd.

My Ph.D. focuses on investigating ocean ventilation across the Southern Ocean by considering how submesoscale processes in the mixed layer can enhance the possibility of transient ventilation events, which may result in changes to heat and carbon fluxes between the atmosphere and ocean. I am particularly interested in whether the seasonality of submesoscale activity causes an increase in likelihood of transient ventilation events or, in other words, an increase in ventilation potential. I am investigating these events through various datasets, including seal-borne measurements, ship-borne data, satellite data, and automated underwater vehicle (AUV) captured data.

Plain Language: In my Ph.D., I am investigating the movement of different water masses in the Southern Ocean with a focus on small scale processes (submesoscale processes), which typically act on the scale of hours to days and across 1-10 km horizontally, in the upper-most layer of the ocean (the well-mixed layer). I will be considering the rising and falling of water masses (ventilation) and whether there is a relationship with small scale processes enhancing such events across the Southern Ocean. This impacts nutrient (biogeochemical) distribution and carbon and heat uptake into the ocean, so has a direct influence on the regional ecology as well as global climate and climate change.
 
Keywords: mixed layer, submesoscale processes, ocean-atmosphere fluxes, ventilation potential.