Eva Bendix Nielsen
Climatology and remote sensing
University of Canterbury
PhD candidate
Eva Nielsen is a PhD candidate investigating the regional distribution and meteorological drivers of foehn warming along the Antarctic coastline. She is using 19 years of satellite-derived surface temperature products, climate model outputs, and in-situ measurements from automatic weather stations to identify extreme warming events along the terrestrial coastal margin of Antarctica.
Long-lasting foehn events in the McMurdo Dry Valleys have been linked to extreme glacial runoff and flooding. Identifying the location and frequency of these dry winds (and capturing their relation to surrounding synoptic scale circulation patterns) will advance understanding of recent climactic change in this polar desert.
Supervision of this work is being undertaken by the Centre for Atmospheric Research at the University of Canterbury's School of Earth and Environment, the University of Otago's School of Geography, and the Institute of Landscape Ecology at University of Münster in Germany.