ATMO Home| Profile |
|
Phone: 979.847.9090 Dr. Robert KortyAssistant ProfessorPh.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005
B.A., University of Virginia, 1999 Research InterestsOur group works on climate dynamics, which include applications to past, present, and future climate states. During the late Cretaceous period (100-65 million years ago) and the early Eocene epoch (about 55 million years ago), the planet was ice-free, exotic plants and animals lived above the Arctic Circle, and the difference between temperatures in the tropics and at the poles was small compared to today. There are vexing questions about how the climate operates in states very different from the present one, and it has been challenging to understand how the atmosphere and oceans transported sufficient heat to maintain these states when temperature gradients were weak; numerical models and general circulation theory have both shown deficiencies. In these warm climates, deep convection may be more important to the maintenance of the tropospheric stratification in middle and high latitudes than it is presently, and the relative contribution of midlatiude storms and convection to the stratification could vary with climate. We are working on several projects using numerical models, observational analyses (of the present atmosphere), and conceptual models to tackle these questions. We are also studying the role of tropical cyclones in climate. The observational record of tropical storms is fairly short—before satellites covered the globe, there were almost certainly storms that formed and decayed over the open oceans of the world without ever being noted in a historical database. We are using numerical models and data from the present climate to understand how tropical storm formation could have varied in the past, including during the last ice age. Our goal is to use this information to better understand how or whether storm formation will change in the future. Selected Publications
|
