I (she/her) am a postdoctoral researcher in the Linz Group in the Earth and Planetary Science Department at Harvard University. In this position I study the way that we model the stratosphere, and how this impacts our understanding of surface climate. I completed my PhD in the spring of 2022 working in the Keith Group at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. My doctoral work focused facets of Solar Radiation Management (SRM), or the intentional manipulation of the Earth’s radiative budget to lower climate risks associated with increasing atmospheric green house gas concentrations. Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), is a proposed method of SRM in which a layer of reflective particles, aerosols, are intentionally added to high layers of the atmosphere to reflect sunlight back to space.

I’ve been in the greater Boston area since beginning my undergraduate degreee at Tufts University, recieving a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering in 2015. Following graduation I spent a year as a consultant with Navigant, now Guidehouse, consulting, where I worked on technical documents for the U.S. Department of Energy’s energy efficiency standards for consumer appliances. In my free time I love to run, ski, and surf all over New England!

Research Interests

I have used both global climate models and high resolution plume scale models to understand the implications of SAI. My initial PhD work supported design of the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), a balloon platform proposed to generate and sample a stratospheric aerosol plume. To understand how particles might behave in a balloon wake, I coupled a numerical advection/diffusion and aerosol microphysical model.

My current work focuses on understanding the impact of stratospheric heating on policy relevant surface variables and changes to stratospheric dynamics. I’m broadly interested in developing a stronger understanding of stratospheric phenomena via the probing of employed numerical methods, parameterizations, and physical underpinnings in global circulation models. By identifying how and why imposed perturbations are expressed differently between models, whether this manifests via changes to ozone concentrations, sudden stratospheric warming events or the Brewer-Dobson circulation, we can better understand the current climate and more effectively predict the impacts of climate change. In my next position I would like to gain expertise employing novel methods for climate forecasting, such as the use of machine learning or neural network emulators to improve the representation of parameterized processes.

Ethical Statement

SAI is an understandibly controversial topic, and as I researcher I’ve continuously grappled with my own ethical believes regarding both research and deployment of this technology. Currently, the slow rate of emissions cuts and tedious domestic political movement to impose meaningful climate policy motivate me to study this topic. However, I am by no means a proponent of deployment. I seek to critically examine the real tradeoffs and potential harms of this technology such that future decision makers can make an informed decision.