Peter is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow examining the representation of decadal-scale climate variability in general circulation models. His focus is on understanding why the models cannot simulate a Pacific trade wind acceleration of the same magnitude to that observed from the early 1990s to the early 2010s. The observed trade wind acceleration had impacts ranging from a faster sea level rise in the western tropical Pacific Ocean, to slowing down global mean surface warming. Improving the representation of events like these in the models will help in constraining future climate projections.

Peter received his PhD from Monash University in 2020 focusing on the influence of El Niño-Southern Oscillation on east Australian rainfall. He has previously worked at CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology where he focused on a wide range of topics, from understanding changes in modes of climate variability, to investigating how changes in weather systems affect river catchment runoff.

Climate variability and model biases