Introducing our modelling fellows
The Modelling Hub, a collaboration between the Antarctic Science Platform, Victoria University of Wellington, NIWA and GNS Science, has now been up and running for eight months. We announced the fellows in May, but would now like to share more information about each of these impressive future projections’ researchers, in their own words.
Alexandra Gossart from Victoria University of Wellington
I am Alex(andra) Gossart, I studied geography in Belgium and started studying Antarctica during my Masters. I continued with a PhD in Antarctic climate combining both observations and regional climate modelling. My focus and interests were on boundary-layer and snowpack interactions and especially surface mass balance processes. I graduated at the end of 2019 and started as regional climate modeller for the national modelling hub in February. I am running Polar-WRF at different spatial and temporal scales and am very excited to collaborate with different research fields and across various periods (paleo climate, present day and future projections). My objectives are to test and evaluate the performance of the model and its uncertainties in order to define the optimum regional climate model setup for future projections. In addition, I work closely with the ocean and ice sheet modellers at couplings between the different models.
Alena Malyarenko from NIWA
I am a physical oceanographer with a background in modelling the Arctic Ocean and interannual water mass variability. During my PhD at University of Otago and NIWA I shifted my focus to the Ross Ice Shelf cavity oceanography, looking both at observations and modelling. I will now develop these ideas with a regional implementation of the mitGCM ocean model for the Ross Sea exploring effects of model parameterisations and collaborating with the rest of the Modelling Hub.
Angela Bahamondes-Dominguez also from NIWA
Shortly after earning my degree in Geophysics (Universidad de Concepción, Chile), I moved to Southampton (UK) to start a PhD in Oceanography at the National Oceanography Centre. Over the course of my PhD, I developed a wider understanding of oceanographic processes, with my research focused on marine biogeochemical modelling of shelf seas. In addition to my primary research focus, my commitment to spread science with the non-scientific community allowed me to experience many outreach activities that I hope to continue doing in the future. I am currently working as a biogeochemical modeller with NIWA and the Antarctic Science Platform by developing physical-biological coupled models for the Ross Sea (Antarctica) to assess and understand the impact of ocean circulation and climate on marine plankton ecosystems and the carbonate system.
Mario Krapp from GNS Science
As the data scientist of the National Modelling Hub team I use Machine Learning approaches to get a better understanding of the role of Antarctica in the Earth System. I have a background in physics and geosciences and have previously worked on various interdisciplinary research projects, such as paleo-climate, ecology, numerical climate modelling, to climate change policy. My goal is to provide simple solutions to complex problem for which I bring in a strong background in statistical modelling, machine learning and programming. I’m currently working on a statistical emulator for the dynamic sea-level response of the Antarctic Ice Sheet under different future global warming scenarios and on deep learning approaches for spatial downscaling. Right now, I’m also recruiting a PhD student for a project to use Machine Learning methods for improving our understanding of uncertainties of past ice-volume and global temperature inferred from geological proxy records. I plan to look into ways how we can make better use of observations, geological records, and climate model outputs to quantify uncertainty in the climate system on different temporal and spatial scales.