Tiffany ShawProfessor

Research Focus:

Atmospheric dynamics; climate change

Email:

tas1@uchicago.edu

Office:

Hinds 419

Biography

• NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow, Courant Institute, NYU & Columbia University
• PhD, Physics, University of Toronto

Research Interests

Prof. Shaw’s research focuses on the physics of the atmosphere and climate system past, present and future. She seeks to understand the underlying mechanisms controlling the response to climate changes so that we can have greater confidence in future projections. Her approach combines theory (primarily conservation laws), numerical modeling across a hierarchy of complexity and observational data analysis. Using this approach Prof. Shaw has shown moist thermodynamics can explain why climate zones shift latitudinally in response to anthropogenic emissions and surface albedo changes can explain why the atmospheric circulation weakens in response to Arctic sea ice loss.

Selected Publications

• Shaw, T. A., O. Miyawaki, O., 2023: Fast upper-level jet stream winds get faster under climate change, Nature Climate Change, 10.1038/s41558-023-01884-1 Press coverage: National Geographic, The Atlantic, UChicago News, Carbon Brief Guest Post

• Kang, J., T. A. Shaw and L. Sun, 2023: Arctic Sea Ice Loss Weakens Northern Hemisphere Summertime Storminess but Not Until the Late 21st Century, Geophys. Res. Lett., 10.1029/2022GL102301.

• Shaw, T. A., O. Miyawaki, O., and A. Donohoe, 2022: Stormier Southern Hemisphere induced by topography and ocean circulation, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 10.1073/pnas.2123512119. Press coverage: Washington Post, WBEZ, UChicago News, Carbon Brief Guest Post

• Miyawaki, O., T. A. Shaw and M. F. Jansen, 2021: Quantifying energy balance regimes in the modern climate, their link to lapse rate regimes, and their response to warming, J. Climate, 10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0440.1.

• Tan, Z. and T. A. Shaw, 2020: Quantifying the impact of wind and surface humidity induced surface heat exchange on the circulation shift in response to increased CO2, Geophys. Res. Lett., 10.1029/2020GL088053.

• Barpanda, P. and T. A. Shaw, 2020: Surface fluxes modulate the seasonality of zonal-mean storm tracks, J. Atmos. Sci., 10.1175/JAS-D-19-0139.1.

A full list of publications can be found here. 

Honors

• 2023 Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
• 2017 American Geophysical Union James B. Macelwane Medal
• 2015 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (Physics)
• 2013 NSF CAREER award
• 2012 Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering
• 2011 American Geophysical Union James R. Holton Award