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Dr Ian M. Brooks - Senior Lecturer in Atmospheric
Science
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My research interests lie mostly within the area of boundary-layer meteorology and turbulent exchange processes - air-sea interaction, entrainment, and polar boundary layers - straying occasionally into aerosol and cloud microphysical processes. While primarily an experimental/observational scientist, I have become increasingly involved with modelling studies, using large eddy simulation to study boundary-layer processes directly, and confronting large-scale models with measurements to try and figure out why they don't work as well as we'd like them to.
Publications | Conference papers | C.V. | Fieldwork Blog
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS
High Wind Gas Exchange Study (HiWinGS)
A
a NERC funded collaboration between Leeds, the National Oceanography Centre (Robin Pascal), and the University of Southampton (Helen Czerski, Timothy Leighton, and Steve Gunn). This is a contribution to a US project to study the exchange of gases (CO2, CO, DMS, and maybe others) between the ocean and atmosphere at high wind speeds where wave breaking and bubbles become important factors. We will be deploying an 11-m spar buoy, designed and built at NOC for a previous SOLAS study, instrumented to measure wave spectra, wave breaking, and bubbles in the upper ocean; the surface coverage of whitecaps, and sea-spray aerosol fluxes. US teams from the University of Hawai'i (Barry Huebert and Jeff Hare) and NOAA (Chris Fairall) will measure gas fluxes. Other teams have proposals pending to add further measurements to the cruise, schuduled to take place in October/November 2013.
Blowing snow and sea ice surfaces as a source of polar sea salt aerosol (BLOWSEA)
The concentration of salt in ice cores has been proposed as a sea ice proxy for use in assessing past climate - several lines of evidence suggest that sea salt aerosol generated from the sublimation of blowing snow over sea ice is the major source of salt in the cores. While this has been applied by a number of studies of past climate, without quantification of the source it is difficult to specify exactly what aspect of sea ice is being recorded within the ice core. This study will characterise the rate of production of sea-salt aerosol from the evaporation of blowing snow over sea ice and provide a means to quantify the deposition rate to glacial ice in the past and thus constrain past climate conditions inferred from the salt concentration in ice cores. BLOWSEA is led by Eric Wolf at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in collaboration with Anna Jones (BAS), Phil Anderson (SAMS), and John Pyle and Xin Yang (University of Cambridge).
Aerosol-Cloud Coupling and Climate Interactions in the Arctic (ACCACIA)
A £3M NERC-funded consortium project in collaboration with the Universities of Manchester, York, and East Anglia, and the British Antarctic Survey, along with the Met Office and project partners in the US and Europe. ACCACIA aims to improve our understanding of aerosol-cloud interactions in the Arctic, and the potential changes and feedbacks that may result from decreasing Arctic sea ice cover in the future. In situ measurements will be made during two field campaigns utlising ship-based measurements of surface aerosol sources and airborne measurements of aerosol and cloud microphysical properties, boundary layer dynamics, and radiative forcing. The observations will be complemented by modelling studies on a range of scales: from explicit aerosol and cloud microphysics process modelling, through large eddy simulation and mesoscale models, up to global climate models.
ACCACIA background, news, and project blog: http://arcticaccacia.wordpress.com/
Follow ACCACIA on twitter @_
ACCACIA_
WAGES : Waves Aerosol and Gas Exchange
Study
A joint project with members of the Surface
Processes group at the National Oceanography
Centre, Southampton, WAGES will make continuous measurements of air sea
fluxes of CO2 and sea-spray aerosol as well as momentum, heat and moisture,
coupled with measurements of forcing processes: mean wind, wurface wave spectrum,
whitecap fraction, etc. Autonomous measurements will be ongoing over a period
of more than 2 years, supplemented with manned campaigns where additional measurements
will be made, primarily in-situ wave measurements from a spar buoy. The project
aims to develop improved air-sea flux parameterizations that include the effects
of wave state and bubble-mediated exchanges.
[NERC grant: NE/G00353X/1][WAGES pages]
ASIST : Air-Sea Interaction &
Sea-spray in Typhoons
The evaporation of water from sea-spray is thought to modify the exchange of
heat and moisture between the ocean and atmosphere. At low wind speeds the effect
is negligible, but at high wind speeds (>15 m/s), significant volumes of
spray are generated, and the impact on heat and moisture fluxes is believed
to be significant. Most of the work on this effect has relied upon theoretical
arguments or modelling studies, and evidence from discrepancies between existing
bulk flux algorithms and observations under high winds. This study is a collaboration
with collagues at the Rosenstiel School
of Marine & Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami, and part
of a much larger programme aimed at improving the forecasting of Pacific Typhoons:
ITOP (Impact of Typhoons on the Ocean in the Pacific). We will
make direct measurements of air-sea fluxes, and the sea-spray aerosol spectra
within Typhoons in the East/South China Seas, in order to make direct estimates
of the impact of spray production on the air-sea fluxes.
[NERC grant: NE/H004238/1][ASIST pages]
ASCOS : Arctic Summer Cloud-Ocean
Study
An
international project, coordinated by Stockholm University, to investigate the
interactions between the Arctic icecap, the overlying boundary layer, and the
ubiquitous low-level stratiform cloud. A 6-week field campaign was conducted
from the Swedish Icebreaker Oden during the summer of 2008. The Leeds
group ran the surface & boundary layer micrometeorology measurement campaign
in collaboration with a group from University of Stockholm, making extensive
measurements of turbulent exchange and boundary layer structure over sea ice
from 15-m and 30-m masts erected on the ice, along with a turbulence-sonde carried
by a tethered balloon. We also ran a SODAR to make wind profile & BL structure
measurements up to about 500m.
[NERC grant: NE/E010008/1 - field campaign][ASCOS
pages]
[NERC grant: NE/H02168X/1 - analysis]
Details of some recently completed research projects can be found here.
Research Group
Dr. Sarah Norris - PDRA - working on sea-spray aerosol fluxes as part of the SEASAW, SO-SAFE, and WAGES projects.
Dr Sam Peppe - PDRA/NCAS instrument scientist - Sam works across multiple projects, providing support for field and laboratory measurements, developing and maintaining instrumentation, and helping to run everything in the field.
Tom Pleavin - PhD student - Funded via a NERC Open CASE award with the MetOffice, Tom is studying the dynamics of arctic stratus clouds, utilizing the MetOffice Large Eddy Model and observations from the ASCOS campaign.
David Tupman - PhD Student - working on the WAGES project, David is studying the impact of wave state on air-sea fluxes, in particular those of CO2 and sea-spray aerosols.
Dominic Salisbury - PhD student - working satelite retrievals of ocean whitecaps and air-sea fluxes.
Rebecca Jansen - PhD student - Having undertaken a Masters project using data from Antarctica Rebecca is switching hemispheres and is now studying for a PhD on Arctic boundary layer clouds, working on the ACCACIA project. In between degrees she worked on data processing and analysis of whitecap data from the WAGES project.
Former Group Members
Dr Cathryn Birch - Cathryn completed a PhD on Arctic meteorology funded by NERC and a CASE award from the MetOffice. She worked on turbulent exchange processes over the Arctic icecap as part of the ASCOS programme, and investigating the representation of these processes and boundary layer structure within the Met Office Unified Model. She has now moved on to warmer topics, working on land-atmosphere interactions over West Africa.
Dr Guylaine Canut - 2011-2012 - worked with the ASCOS data set to investigate coupling processes between the surface and low level Arctic stratus cloud. She obtained her PhD from the University of Toulouse, France, working on boundary layer processes in the Sahara using the AMMA project data. She now holds a permanent position with the boundary-layer measurement group at Meteo-France.
Dr Dave Sproson - 2010-2013 - worked as a PDRA on sea-spray fluxes; currently working at the University of Upsalla, Sweden, with Anna Rutgersson.
Masters project students
Rebecca Jansson - MRes (2010/11) - Analysis of aircraft measurements of surface fluxes over heterogeneous Antarcic sea ice: partitioning by surface properties and testing of flux aggregation models (in collaboration with British Antarctic Survey)
Ruth Loughrey - MRes (2009/10) - turbulent coupling of cloud and sea-ice in the Arctic Ocean.
Andrew Fish - MRes (2008/9) - a study of the vertical structure of the arctic boundary layer using ASCOS data, particularly the SODAR and tethersonde measurements.
Anthony Bloom - MRes (2006/7) - worked on CO2 flux data from the SEASAW project.
Alison Fowler - MRes (2005/6) Alison used the MetOffice Large Eddy Model to study entrainment processes in convective boundary layers. She went on to do a PhD in data assimilation at Reading and is now a post-doc there.
Teaching 2012/2013
SOEE3410 - Atmosphere and Ocean Climate Change [internal module pages]
Introduction to MATLAB - introductory course on MATLAB programming for research students - this course is not currently running, but feel free to use the slides and online exercises linked here.
