# Research ## Overview I am broadly interested in the behavior of the climate system at the global scale. Our group's research is oriented toward fundamental questions such as: - What factors control the global mean temperature and its equator-to-pole gradient? - What determines the rate of global warming, land-ocean contrasts, and polar amplification? - Why has Earth's climate been more variable during some periods of the deep geological past than others? - Is the climate unique, or does the Earth system possess multiple equilibria? By studying the fundamental underlying rules governing the climate system, we build a deeper understanding of the past and future evolution of climate on Earth, and other planets as well. ## Background Attempting to answer the above questions inevitably involves studying the often-surprising interactions among different components of the climate system: atmosphere, ocean, ice, etc. I have broad training in both atmospheric science and oceanography, and I am particularly interested in coupled atmosphere-ocean climate dynamics over long time scales. I also have special interests in polar climate, ocean-sea ice interaction, and radiative feedback processes. In recent years I have also become very passionate about open, reproducible science, and the crucial role of technology and software in that process. I encourage my students to pursue a broad graduate education that aligns with their own interests. ## Philosophy, approach, and tools Our group's work typically takes a *building blocks* approach, trying to build understanding of the complex climate system through judicious simplification. We explore ideas using hierarchies of idealized atmosphere-ocean models, ranging from simple mathematical descriptions to complex coupled numerical calculations. Our day-to-day work rests upon these **three pillars**: - **Curiosity**: Science is ultimately about the fun of asking questions and seeking answers. Remembering to follow your curiosity is a serious business. - **Rigor**: We can't answer questions without striving to answer question well! We aim to be careful, thoughtful, and quantitative in all our work, and communicate our results are clearly as possible. - **Openness and reproducibility**: Science is also fundamentally about communication. Given the central role of computation in our field, we have a special responsibility to guard against the proliferation of non-reproducible results. We embrace [open science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_science) as a core value, and we put time and effort into developing tools that serve the scientific community. Some **specific tools** we work with: - Numerical climate models such as the [Community Earth System Model (CESM)](http://www.cesm.ucar.edu) and the [MITgcm](http://mitgcm.org) - [climlab](https://climlab.readthedocs.io), a flexible Python-based toolkit for building model hierarchies (developed right here in our group but used worldwide!) - Atmospheric reanalysis data products such as the [MERRA-2](https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/reanalysis/MERRA-2/) from NASA. - Python and Jupyter notebooks for most of our day-to-day analysis work. - Good old-fashioned pencil and paper! ## Current projects Some specific ongoing research interests and projects include: - Effects of ocean heat uptake, natural variability, and pattern effects on climate sensitivity and radiative feedback processes - Understanding the land-atmosphere processes controlling desert amplification - The observed vertical structure of heat fluxes into the Arctic and their role in polar amplification - Multiple equilibria in the coupled climate system - The dynamics of past warm climates and glacial-interglacial transitions - Oceanography of Snowball Earth - [Effects of obliquity on exoplanet climate](posts/2017/2017-08-04-ice-belt-paper-accepted) You can find all our group's [publications here on this site](publications). You can also find [Brian's full CV on github](https://github.com/brian-rose/CV/blob/master/Rose_CV.pdf) ## Collaborators Some of Brian's collaborators and coauthors (past and present): - [Kyle Armour](https://faculty.washington.edu/karmour/) (UW) - [David Battisti](http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/) (UW) - [Michaela Biasutti](http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~biasutti/) (LDEO) - [Cecilia Bitz](http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~bitz/) (UW) - [Tim Cronin](http://web.mit.edu/~twcronin/www/index.html) (MIT) - [Aiguo Dai](https://www.albany.edu/daes/faculty/aiguo-dai) (U. Albany DAES) - [Aaron Donohoe](https://apl.uw.edu/people/profile.php?last_name=Donohoe&first_name=Aaron) (UW) - [Nicole Feldl](http://nicolefeldl.com) (UC Santa Cruz) - [David Ferreira](https://research.reading.ac.uk/meteorology/people/david-ferreira/) (U. Reading) - [Matthew Henry](https://matthewjhenry.github.io) (U. Exeter) - [Paul Hoffman](https://eps.harvard.edu/people/paul-hoffman) (Harvard, U.Vic.) - [Yen-Ting Hwang](http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~ythwang/Yen-Ting_Hwang/Welcome.html) (National Taiwan University) - [Daniel Koll](https://danielkoll.github.io) (Peking U.) - [Andrea Lang](https://www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/andrea/) (U. Albany DAES / U. Wisconsin-Madison) - [Yuan-Jen Lin](https://yuanjenlin.github.io) (Columbia U. / NASA GISS) - [Elizabeth Maroon](https://www.aos.wisc.edu/faculty/Maroon/) (U. Wisconsin-Madison) - [John Marshall](http://eaps-www.mit.edu/paoc/people/john-marshall) (MIT) - [Tim Merlis](https://timothymerlis.com) (Princeton U.) - [Maria Rugenstein](https://www.atmos.colostate.edu/people/faculty/rugenstein/) (Colorado State U.) - [Oliver Elison Timm](https://www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/timm/) (U. Albany DAES) - [Hansi Singh](https://www.uvic.ca/science/seos/people/faculty/profiles/singh-hansi.php) (U. Victoria) - [Aiko Voigt](https://img.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/staff/private-homepages/voigt-aiko/) (U. Vienna) - [Liming Zhou](http://www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/zhou/lzhou.html) (U. Albany DAES)