Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences and The College
Ph.D., MIT, 1980
Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques
Fellow, American Geophysical Union
John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (1996/1997)
At present, my central interest is in how climate works as a system.
I wish to develop idealized mathematical models that can be used
to address the big questions of climate science: How did the earth
keep from freezing over during the Faint Young sun period in its
history? Why did Earth keep its water while Venus got trapped
in a runaway greenhouse? What possible past climates could exist
on Mars? Why was the Eocene so warm on Earth? What was tropical
sea surface temperature doing during the Last Glacial Maximum?
This involves work at the interface of fluid dynamics and radiative
transfer. My philosophy is to approach this using simplified models
(albeit often ones involving some degree of computation) that
can be understood completely, rather than full-blown General Circulation
Models. A recurrent theme in much of this work is the determination
of the Earth's relative humidity distribution, which is the key
to many climate change problems.
Although I consider myself primarily a theoretician, modern network
and computer facilities make data readily accessible, and I try
to provide my students easy access to a variety of data sets and
computational resources. We have links to the broader observational
and modelling community through a number of collaborative efforts.
I have also maintained an interest in more traditional areas of
geophysical fluid dynamics, particularly as related to baroclinic
instability, storm track structure, and planetary wave propagation.
I am also actively engaged in fluid mechanical research of a more
abstract nature, particularly as related to two-dimensional turbulence
and mixing in two-dimensional area-preserving flows. In this work
there has proved to be good cross-fertilization with ideas generated
in active nonlinear research groups in Physics and Astrophysics.
Here is an abbreviated vitae.
The following link takes you to a complete list of my publications, with many available for online viewing or downloading.