A concern about climate change is a major motivator that pushed me to start learning more about climate science, which led me to start doing research on the physics of monsoons during my undergraduate degree. I quickly fell in love with the subject as I realized climate physics uniquely dovetails my interests, like data visualization, math, and physics.
Academically, I am interested in studying broad, fundamental questions about the tropical climate. Large components of the tropical climate, like monsoons, the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), Atmospheric rivers, and hurricanes, particularly capture my attention, especially considering how they evolve with climate change.
For my PhD, I am studying the dynamics of Atmospheric Rivers, which are regions of intense water vapor transport in the atmosphere. These are long, narrow, jet-like features that hold a lot of water and can cause rainfall when they undergo lifting over land. In some regions of the US West Coast, they contribute to as much as 50 percent of the annual rainfall!
Below is an animation showing how ARs form. Most streaks of high IVT regions in the first plot are ARs, and the second plot reveals where they usually derive their moisture from - the tropics!