I am a South African whose passion for climate dynamics has taken me across hemispheres. My research aims to improve our understanding of the key processes determining Earth's climate and climate variability on a variety of timescales ranging from seasonal to decadal to much longer geological scales. I focus on the climatic role of ocean general circulation, ocean-atmospheric interactions, and cloud dynamics.
Knowledge of the processes giving rise to present-day climate variability and past climate change is required in order to anticipate the influence of human activity on climate. My research efforts acknowledge that, to fully understand, model, and predict changes in climate characteristics that have a large impact on society (especially temperature and precipitation patterns), a fully coupled ocean-atmosphere perspective is needed - one that accounts for changes in important variables such as the thermal structure of the slowly-adjusting ocean. Complementing observations with theory, I endeavor to accompany complex simulations of climate phenomena with simple models capturing the essential dynamics required to explain unanswered questions within climate science.