Dr Christine McKenna

Profile

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on the EU-funded CONSTRAIN project. In this project I am looking at future projections of large-scale atmospheric circulation change, with the aim of constraining uncertainty in these projections. 

Before coming to Leeds, I studied for my PhD at the British Antarctic Survey and University of Cambridge (DAMTP). This was under the supervision of Tom Bracegirdle, Peter Haynes, and Emily Shuckburgh. In my PhD I used an intermediate global circulation model, IGCM4, to look at how the large-scale atmospheric circulation changes in response to future Arctic sea-ice loss. In particular, I examined whether the response is sensitive to different regions or magnitudes of sea-ice loss, and the relative roles played by tropospheric and stratospheric mechanisms. I also looked at the influence of atmospheric internal variability with regards to uncertainty in simulated atmospheric responses to sea-ice loss.

Papers in press:

C. M. McKenna & A. C. Maycock. The role of the North Atlantic Oscillation for projections of winter mean precipitation in Europe, GRL, in press.

Papers in review:

In preparation:

V. Charnay, C. M. McKenna & A. C. Maycock. Uncertainty in projected sea surface temperature trends and North Pacific atmospheric circulation, in prep.

Research interests

• Large-scale atmospheric circulation
• Stratosphere-troposphere coupling
• Extratropics 
• Climate dynamics
• Climate variability
• Climate modelling
• Large “initial-condition” ensembles (LEs)

Qualifications

• PhD Atmospheric Dynamics - University of Cambridge and British Antarctic Survey, 2019
• MSc Atmosphere, Ocean, and Climate - University of Reading, 2015
• BSc Geography and Mathematics - University of St Andrews, 2014

Professional memberships

• Royal Meteorological Society

Research groups and institutes

• Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science