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Research Interests
Earth's atmospheric circulation and its energy transport are essential for Earth's habitability - past, present and future. Some of the most dramatic examples of the circulation's influence include the abrupt seasonal increase of precipitation and reversal of trade winds that occur as part of the Monsoons and the seasonal migration of the storm track (region where weather systems occur most frequently) 10 degrees poleward. My research explores the physics of the atmospheric circulation from the equator to the pole and the surface to the stratosphere. I seek to improve understanding of the circulation through a combination of theory, hierarchical numerical modeling and observational data analysis.
Recent projects
Storm track dynamics
Shaw, T. A. and Z. Smith, 2022: The midlatitude response to polar sea ice loss: Idealized slab-ocean aquaplanet experiments with thermodynamic sea ice, J. Climate., 10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0508.1.
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.
Shaw, T. A., P. Barpanda and A. Donohoe, 2018: A moist static energy framework for zonal-mean storm track intensity, J. Atmos. Sci., 75, 1979-1994.
Barpanda, P. and T. A. Shaw , 2017: Using the moist static energy budget to understand storm track shifts across a range of timescales, J. Atmos. Sci., 10.1175/JAS-D-17-0022.1.
Shaw, T. A., M. Baldwin, E. A. Barnes, R. Caballero, C. I. Garfinkel, Y-T. Hwang, C. Li, P. A. O'Gorman, G. Riviere, I R. Simpson, and A. Voigt, 2016: Storm track processes and the opposing influences of climate change, Nature Geosc., 10.1038/ngeo2783.
Circulation response to increased CO2
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.
Shaw, T. A. and Z. Tan, 2018: Testing latitudinally-dependent explanations of the circulation response to increased CO2 using aquaplanet models, Geophys. Res. Lett., 10.1029/2018GL078974.
Shaw, T. A. and A. Voigt, 2016: Land dominates the regional response to CO2 direct radiative forcing, Geophys. Res. Lett., 10.1002/2016GL071368.
Shaw, T. A. and A. Voigt, 2016: Understanding the links between subtropical and extratropical circulation responses to climate change using aquaplanet model simulations, J. Climate, 10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0049.1.
Shaw, T. A. and A. Voigt, 2016: What can moist thermodynamics tell us about circulation shifts in response to uniform warming?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 10.1002/2016GL068712.
Stratosphere-troposphere coupling
Dunn-Sigouin, E. and T. A. Shaw, 2018: Dynamics of extreme stratospheric negative heat flux events in an idealized model, J. Atmos. Sci., 75, 3521-3540.
England, M. R., T. A. Shaw, and L. M. Polvani, 2016: Troposphere-stratosphere dynamical coupling in the Southern high latitudes, and its linkage to the Amundsen Sea, J. Geophys. Res., 10.1002/2015JD024254.
Dunn-Sigouin, E., and T. A. Shaw, 2015: Comparing and contrasting extreme stratospheric events, including their coupling to the tropospheric circulation. J. Geophys. Res., 10.1002/2014JD022116.