Dr Lauren Gregoire

Profile

I am an ice sheet and climate modeller working on linking past and future ice sheet changes through the development of new Artificial Intelligence and Uncertainty Quantification techniques climate-ice sheet interactions during the Quaternary. I currently hold a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship which funds the SMB-Gen project aimed at Constraining projections of ice sheet instabilities and future sea-level rise. 

Short Bio: I did my PhD at the University of Bristol with Professor Paul Valdes and Professor Tony Payne on modelling the climate and ice sheets during the last deglaciation. It is during my PhD that I discovered the mechanism of Saddle Collapse ice sheet instability which produced two major events of rapid sea-level rise, the Meltwater Pulse 1a and the 8.2 kyr events, both of which are associated with abrupt climate changes. I have also pioneered the use of uncertainty quantification in modelling past climate and ice sheets and was the Model Uncertainty working group leader within Past Earth Network (PEN) that brought statisticians and palaeoclimatologists together. I have been the co-leader of the PMIP Deglaciations working group since 2014 and was a topical editor for Geoscientific Model Development (GMD). I joined the University of Leeds in July 2013 as an Academic Research Fellow in Earth System modelling and became an Associate Professor in 2019. I have the pleasure to lead fantastic researchers within the Climate-Ice research group. 

Responsibilities

• Deputy Director of Postgraduate Research Studies (computing projects). Drop-in Tues 12-1 pm
• Steering committee member for the Centre of Excellence for Modelling the Atmosphere and Climate (CEM

Research interests

I use the Glimmer and BISICLES ice sheet models and the FAMOUS and HadCM3 General circulation models of the MetOffice Unified model familly on High Performance Computing Facilities. I also lead the development of AI tools for modelling climate-ice interactions. My main research interests are:

• Linking past and future ice sheet and sea level changes
• Mechanisms of ice sheet instability
• Abrupt climate change
• Rapid sea level rise and Meltwater pulses
• Quantifying uncertainty in complex models
• The Last deglaciation (~ 23,000 to 7,000 years ago)
• The Northern Hemisphere ice sheets; The British and Irish ice sheet

Current Leadership positions:

• co-leader of Palaeo Model Intercomarison Project (PMIP) deglacial working group
• Steering Commitee member of PalaeoARC
• Member of the UKRI Future Leaders Fellow Peer Review College

Previous Leadership positions: 

• Topical Editor for Geoscientific Model Development (2018-2020) 
• Past Earth Network (PEN) model working group leader (2014-2018)

Current Research group 

Postdoctoral research fellows:

• Dr Niall Gandy
• Dr Lachlan Astfalk
• Dr Sam 

Leeds PhD students (see bottom of page)

External PhD students:

• Jamie O'Neill (co-supervisor; March 2018-; based at King's College London):  Sea level rise under climate change: modelling the Pliocene warm period for improved projections of the future.

Previous group members:

• Dr. Stephen George, PDRA (2019)
• Dr. James Salter, PDRA (2017)
• Elizabeth Bowker, PGR (2019-2020)
• Niall Gandy, PGR (Oct 2016-2020): ‘Collapse of the British-Irish Ice Sheet’
• Jennifer Dentith, PGR (Oct 2015-2019), Understanding abrupt climate transitions using geological tracers of ocean circulation
• Ilkka Matero, PGR (Oct 2014-2018): North American ice sheet collapse and abrupt climate change during the 8.2 kyr event.
• Nigel Clifford, MRes (2015-2016): Impact of ice sheet freshwater release in the North Atlantic on the variability of European winter climate.
• Alice Drinkwater, UG (Research experience placement, 2016). Anthropogenic effects on intense melt episodes over Greenland.

Previous research projects:

• Searching for the deglaciation. Feasibility study awarded by EPSRC funded Past Earth Network. (PI; 2017)

• Constraining projections of ice sheet instabilities and future sea level rise
• Pliocene Transient Climate modelling
• Rates of last interglacial sea-level change and responses (RISeR)
• UK SWAIS 2C
• Understanding rising seas and ice by linking coupled models and past climates (RISICMAP19)

Qualifications

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2017
• PhD, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, UK, 2011
• Master in Climate-Environment Interactions, University de Versailles St Quentin, France, 2007
• Licence of Physics, Université de Versailles St Quentin en Yvelines, France, 2005

Professional memberships

• Palaeo Model Intercomarison Project (PMIP) co-leader of the deglacial working group
• Steering Commitee member of PalaeoARC
• Member of the European Geosciences Union (EGU)

Student education

I authored an Online programming course for all: Introduction to python programming. I develop and deliver teaching at undergraduate and masters level on the topics of: Ice in the Earth System, Past Global Environmental Systems, Quaternary climate change, Earth system modelling (practicals using cGenie), Oceanography in the Earth System.

Research groups and institutes

• Palaeo@Leeds
• Earth Surface Science Institute
• Climate Science and Impacts
• Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science

Current postgraduate researchers

• Violet Patterson
• Brooke Snoll