Tropical Climate Dynamics
 Atop the stratovolcano Volcán Poás [2708 m] Parque Nacional Volcán Poás, Alajuela, Costa Rica March 2012 |
Benjamin R. Lintner Assistant Professor Office: |
Predictive
understanding of the space and time variability of tropical
precipitation is critical to our ability to simulate climate with
models, to interpret observations of past and modern climate
conditions, and to anticipate future climate change impacts. With the
broad goal of contributing understanding of the multi-scale,
spatiotemporal characteristics of tropical precipitation, my current
research foci include: (i) the controls on the mean climate and
variability of marginally-convecting tropical regions; (ii) the
statistics of tropical tropospheric water vapor and trace constituents
and their relationships to deep convection and the vertical and
horizontal properties of the flow; and (iii) the pathways of land
surface-atmosphere coupling in models and observations. In
pursuing these interests, I make use of a diverse array of
observational and reanalysis data sets, a suite of diagnostic
approaches, and a vertical hierarchy of models ranging from
process-based analytic prototypes to full-blown general circulation
models.