Sarah McClory

Profile

I am a PhD student within the Biosphere Atmosphere Group and Physical Climate Change research groups in the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science, funded by the SENSE CDT and partnered with the Met Office. 

My research investigates the effect of atmospheric aerosols on terrestrial ecosystem carbon uptake. Aerosols alter the Earth’s radiative balance via the scattering and absorption of solar radiation as well as by changing cloud properties. This can be favourable for photosynthesis because scattering increases the fraction of light that is diffuse, which can penetrate deeper into canopies and illuminate leaves that would be otherwise shaded. I aim to:

- Examine how historical aerosol loadings and associated climate feedbacks (e.g., temperature and precipitation changes), influence the magnitude of the land carbon sink.

- Observationally constrain key canopy parameters for modelling the photosynthetic effects of diffuse radiation and evaluate the impact on land carbon sink estimates.

- Investigate future impacts on the carbon sink resulting from different climate mitigation scenarios and proposed reductions to anthropogenic aerosol emissions. 

To achieve this, I will interpret observations of forest structure (e.g. satellites, terrestrial laser scanning) and use the UK Earth System Model (UKESM) with a newly implemented interactive diffuse radiation coupling scheme, and the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES). I will also undertake fieldwork to measure leaf reflectance and transmittance variability and then evaluate the impact on modelled photosynthesis as a function of different aerosol conditions. This will be at the AmazonFACE site near Manaus, Brazil, with support from the Met Office, National Institue for Amazon Research (INPA) and the NERC Field Spectroscopy Facility. 

Before my PhD I graduated from the University of Leeds with an MRes Climate and Atmospheric Science degree. My master’s research was supervised by Dr Wuhu Feng, Professor John Plane and Professor Martyn Chipperfield, and used the NCAR Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) to investigate the effect of iodine injection from small satellites on ozone depletion and impacts from stratospheric dynamical variation. 

Research interests

- Aerosol radiative forcing

- Canopy radiative transfer

- Carbon cycle

- Atmospheric chemistry

Qualifications

• MRes Climate and Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds
• BSc Chemistry, University of Southampton