Biography
2016 - pres: Lecturer in Global Change Modelling at School of Earth and Environment
2011 - 2016: Leverhulme Early Career Fellow - SEE, University of Leeds
2009 - 2011: British Geological Survey PDRA
2008 - 2009: Higher Scientific Officer - British Antarctic Survey
2004 - 2008: BAS / University of Bristol PhD Student
I spent 5 years at BAS, first doing a PhD producing the first physical models of mid-Pliocene (~3 million years ago) Greenland and East Antarctic Ice Sheets, then as a post-doc adding higher-order physics into BASISM. For the following two years I was employed by the British Geological Survey (BGS), primarily modelling the Pliocene climate on a project entitled 'Understanding the Pliocene and Anthropocene - linking the past to the future'.
Having initially moved to the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds (UoL) to undertake a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship entitled, 'Can state of the art models reproduce climates of the past?', and then working as a University Research Fellowship. I am now a Lecturer in Global Change Modelling and have a number of funded projects which have been completed in recent years or are ongoing.
Present and Past Research Projects
2019 - 2024: ERC Starting Grant
CLaSS - Climate, Landscape, Settlement and Society: Exploring Human-
Environment Interaction in the Ancient Near East
The CLaSS Project is collaboration between Durham University, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, and University of Leeds, led by Dr. Dan Lawrence and funded by an ERC Starting Grant. The project investigates the relationship between climate fluctuations and the emergence of complex social and political formations over the last 8000 years across the Fertile Crescent region of the Near East, including: Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
2017 - 2021: NERC Biosphere Evolution, Transitions & Resilience Project
Ecosystem resilience and recovery from the Permo-Triassic crisis
The Permo-Triassic boundary saw one of the greatest mass extinctions in all of Earth history. Rapid climate change
in response to huge volcanic emissions of carbon dioxide has been implicated as the primary driver of the mass extinction.
This project will compare the response of terrestrial and marine ecosystems and quantify the climatic drivers of both the
mass extinction and the extended recovery period in the early Triassic.
2015 - 2018: NSFC Project (with Chinese Academy of Science)
Impacts of the Paratethys on environmental evolution in the Tarim Basin:
Geological observations and numerical simulation
Marine retreats and mountain uplift in the Himalayan and Paratethys regions during the Cenozoic have resulted
in the increasing aridification of Central Asia. This project will produce new records from the Tarim Basin (Taklamakin
Desert) examining the retreat of the Paratethys Sea and associated climate changes. This will compliment new climate
model simulations of the Oligocene climate of the region.
2015 - 2016: UoL International Research Collaboration Award
The climatic drivers of biodiversity over the last million years
Modern patterns of biodiversity are dependent on the biogeographic history of the organisms in question.
Within a species this is strongly controlled by the recent climate history of the ecosystems and regions were
the species lives. This project will produce pilot data to test the importance of climate variability and precipitation
extremes in the biodiversity of South American forest ecosystems.
2011 - 2014: Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship
Can state of the art models reproduce climates of the past?
The latest climate models are well tested against historical climate records. However, they have not been
evaluated against much larger climate changes, such as those predicted for the near future. This project will
simulate, using the latest versions of the UK Met Office climate model, three well documented periods of the
recent geological past. These are the Last Glacial Maximum, a particularly cold climate, the moderatel
warmer-than-modern last interglacial and the significantly warmer mid-Pliocene. This will enable the skill of this model in
simulating large climate changes to be evaluated and comparisons with other climate models from around the
world.
2010 - 2012: NERC UK Integrated Ocean Drilling Programme
Instability of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet during the Pliocene warmth?
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet has long been seen as a stable ice mass, but recent evidence has suggested that
marine portions of the ice sheet may have collapsed during the moderately warmer climates of the Pliocene. This
project will produce new records from IODP Site 1165 of the icebergs coming off the vulnerable sectors of the ice
sheet and employ iceberg models to understand their transport.