Geophysical Sciences

Dorian AbbotAssociate Professor

Research Focus:: Climate, paleoclimate, ice, habitability, and exoplanets

Email:: abbot@uchicago.edu
Office:: Hinds 571

Biography

I have an undergraduate degree in physics (2004, Harvard) and a PhD in applied math (2008, Harvard). I came to the University of Chicago as a Chamberlin Fellow and stayed on as a faculty member.

Research Interests

I use mathematical and computational models to understand and explain fundamental problems in Earth and Planetary Sciences. I have worked on problems related to climate, paleoclimate, the cryosphere, planetary habitability, and exoplanets, but I'm always excited to think about new things. I work best with students who have strong mathematical skills that they want to apply to cool problems. Recently I've been focusing a lot of effort on terrestrial exoplanets and habitability. We have a really great community with three faculty in our department and three in astronomy working on exoplanets. Here is a list of our recent PhD graduates in the area.

Selected Publications

Popović, P., Cael, B. B., Silber, M., & Abbot, D. S. (2018). Simple rules govern the patterns of Arctic sea ice melt ponds. Physical review letters, 120(14), 148701. PDF
Abbot, D. S., Bloch-Johnson, J., Checlair, J., Farahat, N. X., Graham, R. J., Plotkin, D., Popovic, P., & Spaulding-Astudillo, F. (2018). Decrease in hysteresis of planetary climate for planets with long solar days. The Astrophysical Journal, 854(1), 3. PDF
Bean, J.L., D.S. Abbot and E. M.-R. Kempton (2017), A Statistical Comparative Planetology Approach to the Hunt for Habitable Exoplanets and Life Beyond the Solar System, Astrophysical Journal, 841:L24. PDF
Checlair, J., K. Menou, and D.S. Abbot (2017), No snowball on habitable tidally locked planets, Astrophysical Journal, 845:132. PDF