Current research

In short, I use numerical modelling to study dynamics and circulation patterns of the hard to study regions of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) and Baffin Bay. The CAA is the main pathway for water travelling from the Arctic Ocean back to the Atlantic Ocean. Changes to this outflow can impact larger global circulation patterns and are expected as a result of climate change. Permafrost thaw and glacier melt increase the flow of nutrients and trace metals to the coastal regions of the CAA and may impact the oceans biogeochemical cycles.

My PhD project is part of GEOTRACES, an international programme studying the biogeochemical cycles of the oceans. I have outlined four main research topics to study using the trace metals Mn and Pb as tools:

1. Advection of water masses into Baffin Bay and the CAA
2. Sensitivity studies of the Riverine Coastal Domain
3. The role of sea ice as a source of Mn to the ocean
4. The importance of tides in mixing of the Canadian Arctic

The area outlined in a solid red line on the figure above indicates the sub-domain of my model, while the red dashed line delineates the full model domain boundary. The white grid represents one in every ten gridpoints of the model grid; the horizontal resolution is around 3 km. As you can tell, the main area covered is the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and Baffin Bay.

Past projects

Experimental Cosmology:

CHIME is a novel radio telescope, based at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory in Penticton, BC. For my honours thesis, I worked on CHIME Pathfinder beam characterization; a step towards calibration of the instrument.

Fluvial geomorphology:

During the summer of 2014, I worked in a research group that studies the interactions of land surface processes and rivers. Some of the model codes I worked on include the UBC regime model and At-a-Station Hydraulic Geometry Simulator, and I developed some recipes of sediment size distributions for experiments. I also helped construct the cool new stream table!