Impact of topography on atmospheric flow: implications for weather and climate

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The objectives of my proposed research program are to improve our understanding of the influence that topography has on weather and climate. Mountains are of interest for a variety of reasons: they act as a barrier to atmospheric flow that can impact the weather and climate in their immediate vicinity as well as downstream; the precipitation that falls on their slopes serves as a valuable source of water for nearby lower-elevation communities and ecosystems; and their glaciers serve as important archives of past climate variability. One of the challenges to doing such research is that the regions of interest are remote and sparsely populated. As a result, data collection is a challenge and our knowledge of the processes by which atmospheric flow interacts with topography is therefore limited. A crucial and unique component of my research program therefore involves on-going data collection activities in mountainous regions, such as the Saint Elias Range in the Yukon Territory, Greenland and the Himalaya, where my group has made in-situ observations as to the impact that topography has on atmospheric flow. We propose to use this data along with other instrumental and paleoclimate datasets as well as numerical models to further our understanding of the impact that topography has on weather and climate.