James Renwick

Dr James Renwick

Associate Professor
School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences
address

Qualifications

BSc (Hons), Mathematics, Canterbury, (1977); MSc, Statistics, Victoria University of Wellington, (1989); PhD, Atmospheric Sciences, U. Washington (Seattle) (1995).

Publications

Publications from 1995 - Now

Research Interests

I am fascinated by the general circulation of the atmosphere – how the atmosphere transports energy and momentum and what it does to achieve this. In particular I am interested in how heating in the tropics is communicated to higher latitudes by the excitation of large-scale waves and how this affects the storm tracks, jet streams, and the location and frequency of long-lived ‘blocking’ anticyclones.

In recent years I have developed an interest in Antarctic climate, especially the growth and decay of Antarctic sea ice. How does the atmospheric circulation (the wind) affect sea ice extent? How this can be tied back to tropical influences?

Beyond these topics, I have a general background in atmospheric physics, plus mathematics and statistics and have broad interests most aspects of climate, from the distant past to the near future. This includes paleoclimate reconstruction, synoptic climatology, the climate of New Zealand, climate modelling, climate change, and the use of statistical and matrix techniques to analyse large data sets.