I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Earth, Atmosphere & Environment at Monash University and an associate investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes. My research interests are in atmospheric dynamics and climate change. I am particularly interested in the influence of cloud and precipitation processes on atmospheric circulations of a wide range of spatial scales.
A new paper led by Sramana Neogi uses a heirarchy of models to help understand changes in the structure of the tropuical circulation under warming (Neogi & Singh, 2022). The study uses a cloud-resolving model and a simple plume model to understand the changes in the vertical structure of a prototype tropical circulation as the surface temperature is increased. The results show that the circulation becomes increasingly top-heavy with warming, leading to a negative dynamical contribution to precipitation, despite an overall strengthening of the circulation in terms of its peak upward velocity. The plume model indicates that these results may be understood as a consequence of entrainment on the lower tropospheric lapse rate becoming increasingly important as the atmosphere warms.
A new paper led by Philip Bläckberg shows that most climate models (17 of the 19 we investigated) project increases in large-scale aggregation of precipitation in response to global climate change (Bläckberg & Singh, 2022). Previous studies have suggested changes in aggregation as one mechanism by which future changes in preciptiation extremes may be amplified. However, we find little relationship between tropics-wide metrics of convective aggregation and precipitation extremes across models, although most models have significant interannual relationships between these quantities. These results suggest that processes other than aggregation may dominate the intermdodel spread in preciptiation extremes.
Our group has published a new paper where we develop a simple model for understanding how moist convective processes interact with large-scale ascending motion in the tropics (Singh & Neogi, 2022). Specifically, the model allows one to calculate the vertical structure of the ascending motion given some parameter relating to mixing and evaporation within convective clouds. This new theoretical framework will be useful for understanding how the tropical circulation changes under climate change. Look out for a forthcoming paper in which we explore this application led by Sramana Neogi!
I currently have positions open for PhD students and honours students to work on a range of projects broadly concerning the dynamics of the tropical atmosphere. Some potential projects are outlined here, but please contact me if you are interested in working in my group.
Martin Singh
School of Earth, Atmosphere & Environment
Monash University
Room 213
9 Rainforest Walk
Clayton, VIC 3800
Australia
Email: martin.singh@monash.edu
Phone: +61 3 9902 0421