Miss Weronika Osmolska
- Email: eewo@leeds.ac.uk
- Thesis title: Nature of cold air outbreaks in Europe in a warming climate
- Supervisors: Dr Charles Chemel, Professor Amanda Maycock, Professor Alan Blyth and Professor Paul Field
Profile
Hello! I am a first year PhD student studying how the cold polar mass from the Arctic changes as a consequence of global warming, and hence how cold air outbreaks will affect us in the future. I am based in the School of Earth and Environment and I am involved with the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS), Institute for Climate Atmospheric Science and Physical Climate Change groups. My PhD programme is funded by the National Environment Research Council (NERC) Panorama Doctoral Training Partnership.
Before starting my PhD, I was an undergraduate student completing an integrated Master’s degree in Physics. My Master’s project was in the field of condensed matter, where I explored the metamagnetic properties of Sr4Ru3O10 using a scanning tunnelling microscope. After completing my Master’s degree, I decided to pursue a career in applied physics, especially in the atmospheric-oceanic area, since this was always a point of great interest to me and I always wanted to learn more about the complex dynamics occurring on our planet.
Research interests
The intense cold temperatures that we experience as part of our weather over consecutive days, typically during winter, can be associated with the cold air mass propagating from the Arctic towards lower latitudes. This event is an extreme weather condition that affects the countries’ agriculture, transport and poses a severe health risk. Whilst cold air outbreaks have been extensively studied, in terms of frequency of occurrence in different regions, research has shown contradictory results; therefore we need to understand how this extreme weather will impact us in the future. Climate change will continue to affect the ice-cover in the Arctic, creating a positive feedback loop, where increasing open ocean will consequently absorb more heat allowing a rapid decline of Arctic ice. However, it is not well understood how the decreasing sea-ice will affect these cold air masses and how this might change their nature, which is what I aim to establish during my PhD.
Qualifications
- MPhys (Hons.) Physics - University of St Andrews
Research groups and institutes
- Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science