Dr Neil Hart
Mesoscale and Dynamical Meteorology, Climate variability and Change

Neil

I'm an atmospheric science researcher with particular interest in problems where mesoscale and/or synoptic-scale dynamics are inextricably linked with the larger-scale climate processes that give rise to variability and change. My work aims to improve our understanding of the seasonal climate of extreme weather events and to contribute to better understanding of the predictability, both potential and practical, of such events. This work has included contributions to key drivers of the southern African hydroclimate and the extreme wind risk of the North Atlantic and Europe.

As a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow I lead First Rains, which pursues rainfall onset prediction problems in order to better answer "When will the rains start?" in southern Africa and other regions with emerging risk of rainfall season delays. I am also Co-I in the NERC-funded DRY-CAB team which, in collaboration with Zambia Meteorological Department, has obtained the first comprehensive set of observations of the Congo Air Boundary in central southern Africa. Before starting this fellowship in late 2022, I was a Departmental Lecturer in the School of Geography and the Environment and Career Development Fellow in Christ Church, Oxford. I've been based in Oxford since 2015, working with colleagues in the African Climate Research group on the processes driving variability and change in central and southern Africa, South America, and elsewhere. Work on these topics has received support from Future Climate for Africa projects, UMFULA and IMPALA, and under CSSP-Brazil projects as part of the wider Newton-Funded CSSP programme. Funding from the John Fell Fund in 2021/22 enabled Dr Marcia Zilli and I to establish the first real-time monitor for the progression of tropical-extratropical cloudband seasons across in the Southern Hemisphere.

From 2012-2015, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. I was working on "Sting Jet Windstorms in Current and Future Climates" together with Suzanne Gray and Peter Clark in the Mesoscale Group. I remain involved in this research with a focus on the predictability of sting jet formation within extratropical cyclones and how this relates to climatological risk of wind storms, both present and future.

In 2012, I completed a PhD on tropical-extratropical cloud bands over southern Africa with some focus on their dynamics and much focus on their interannual variability and importance for rainfall. This work was carried out in the Dept. of Oceanography, University of Cape Town and supported by a David and Elaine Potter Postgraduate Fellowship and funding from the National Research Foundation.