Jonathan D. Wille

Weather extremes have always captured people’s attention through the disruption they cause on economic, societal, and personal levels. After the clouds have passed and the attention moves on, the impacts these events leave often far exceeds their limited lifespan. My research interest is in following the transport of atmospheric moisture from the tropics to the polar regions and examine how it influences the atmospheric dynamics of extreme weather systems and the long-term impacts they have on the Earth’s surface.

Specifically, I research extreme weather impacts on the Antarctic ice sheet primarily through examining polar atmospheric river behavior and the impact they have on the cryosphere. I liked to study the full life-cycle of these extreme events from their large-scale dynamical origins and tropical teleconnections through their final impacts on the Antarctic ice sheet in regard to surface mass balance, ice-shelf stability, and paleoclimate implications. I have also studied the latest tools in modeling extreme weather by examining the simulation of mid-latitude extreme precipitation and drought from the latest generation storm-resolving, convection-permitting global climate models within the nextGEMS project. This research has highlighted the growing threat of drought revealed by models that have a more realistic depiction of atmospheric convective processes.

Outside of research, you’ll often find me making amateur weather forecasts for my friends and then annoying them with random weather facts.