PhD Studentship: How is climate change affecting the onset of global and regional monsoon rainfall. NERC GW4+ DTP PhD studentship for September 2025 Entry Ref 5403

About the Partnership

This project is one of a number that are in competition for funding from the NERC Great Western Four+ Doctoral Training Partnership (GW4+ DTP).  The GW4+ DTP consists of the Great Western Four alliance of the University of Bath, University of Bristol, Cardiff University and the University of Exeter plus five Research Organisation partners:  British Antarctic Survey, British Geological Survey, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology,  the Natural History Museum and Plymouth Marine Laboratory.  The partnership aims to provide a broad training in earth and environmental sciences, designed to train tomorrow’s leaders in earth and environmental science. For further details about the programme please see http://nercgw4plus.ac.uk/

Project details

For information relating to the research project please contact the lead Supervisor via r.s.chadwick@exeter.ac.uk

Project Aims and Methods

60% of the world's population live in countries dependent upon seasonal rainfall from monsoon systems. Climate change is expected to cause changes in the character of monsoon rainfall, with potentially severe impacts on extreme weather, agriculture, water resources, hydropower and health in affected regions. A delayed start to the monsoon season (monsoon onset) occurs in future climate projections of several monsoon regions, and may have also been observed in historical trends, but the processes which drive this delay are not well understood. This project will examine how the onset period of monsoons is responding to climate change across different monsoon regions (e.g. Southern Africa, South America, West Africa, Asia), and whether there is a common process linking monsoon onset changes globally. 
 
Observations and climate model simulations, together with a range of theoretical tools such as energy and momentum budgets, will be used to investigate monsoon onset changes, building on previous work by the supervisory team. The direction of the project will be developed jointly by the student and supervisors, including which monsoon regions are of most interest, which theoretical tools to apply, and whether to produce and analyse new idealised climate model simulations.  

Training

The DTP offers funding to undertake specialist training relating to the student’s specialist area of research. 

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