Professional summary

I am interested in convective storms, extreme weather and how the land affects the atmosphere with consequences for regional water cycles. My research focuses on tropical regions, in particular Africa and South America, where I use a combination of remote sensing data and atmospheric modelling to evaluate how convection and storm characteristics changed in the past decades and what we can expect for the future.

Since 2023 I'm a NERC independent research fellow, investigating drivers of convective organisation and new ways of predicting these powerful thunderstorms.

 

Projects (finished in italics):

  • COCOON (NERC fellow): Continental convective organisation in a warmer world: improving storm predictions from hours to decades
  • UMBRELLA (Co-I): UM Boundary Layer Representation and land effects, within Met Office turbulence programme PARACHUTE
  • LMCS (Co-PI): Global land effects on organised convective storms
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  • CLOVER (PI): The coupling of rainfall and temperature gradients
  • SWIFT / NFLICS: Improving African forecasting on hourly to seasonal scales
  • VERA: Vegetation and deforestation effects on rainfall in West Africa
  • AMMA-2050: African Monsoon Multi-disciplinary Analysis 2050 - future changes in extreme rainfall

 

GW4+ PhD opportunity: Come and do your PhD with us looking at land-atmosphere effects on organised convection!

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Selected publications

Maybee Ben et al. , (2024), Wind shear effects in convection–permitting models influence MCS rainfall and forcing of tropical circulation. Geophysical Research Letters, 51, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110119

Klein Cornelia et al. , (2020), Dry soils can intensify mesoscale convective systems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117, 21132-21137, http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2007998117

Klein Cornelia et al. , (2021), Combining CMIP data with a regional convection-permitting model and observations to project extreme rainfall under climate change. Environmental Research Letters, http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac26f1

Klein Cornelia et al. , (2023), Untangling the importance of dynamic and thermodynamic drivers for wet and dry spells across the tropical Andes. Environmental Research Letters, 18, http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/acb72b

Klein Cornelia et al. , (2021), Seasonality and trends of drivers of mesoscale convective systems in southern West Africa. Journal of Climate, 34, 71-87, http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0194.1

Klein Cornelia et al. , (2018), Wavelet scale analysis of mesoscale convective systems for detecting deep convection from infrared imagery. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 123, 3035-3050, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2017JD027432

Taylor Christopher M. et al. , (2022), “Late-stage” deforestation enhances storm trends in coastal West Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2109285119

Taylor Christopher M. et al. , (2022), Nowcasting tracks of severe convective storms in West Africa from observations of land surface state. Environmental Research Letters, 17, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac536d

Crook Julia et al. , (2019), Assessment of the representation of West African storm lifecycles in convection‐permitting simulations. Earth and Space Science, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2018EA000491

Hänchen Lorenz et al. , (2022), Widespread greening suggests increased dry-season plant water availability in the Rio Santa valley, Peruvian Andes. Earth System Dynamics, 13, 595-611, http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/esd-13-595-2022