Hunter Douglas

Hunter standing in front of hills and waterfalls, wearing hiking gear.

Contact

Email: hunter.douglas@vuw.ac.nz

Qualifications

BSc in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Duke University (2013)

MEng. in Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016)

MEng. in Engineering Systems and Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design (2017)

PhD Candidate in Geophysics

Research Interests

Climate modelling, Atmospheric physics, Data science

PhD thesis

Title

Pathway dependence of climate change emergence in coupled climate models

Supervisors

- Prof James Renwick

- Prof Dave Frame (University of Canterbury)

- A/Prof Laura Revell (University of Canterbury)

Project objectives and description

My project investigates the latest generation of global climate models and what they say about future climate change. Using the research framework of climate change emergence, I study when and how patterns of climate change emerge from the background of natural variability. I synthesise simulation results from across different modelling centres and projects to build bases of evidence, and I apply geospatial data analysis and statistical techniques to examine the ramifications of different future scenarios. In particular, I’m interested in how higher and lower emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols affect the exposure of populations to unusual climatic conditions. My work to date has investigated the inequity of exposure to different possible temperatures in 2050. Future work will investigate more variables as well as the implications of net-negative emissions in the latter half of the century.

Publications

Douglas, H. C., Harrington, L. J., Joshi, M., Hawkins, E., Revell, L. E., & Frame, D. J. (2022). Changes to population-based emergence of climate change from CMIP5 to CMIP6. Environmental Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aca91e

Revell, L. E., Robertson, F., Douglas, H., Morgenstern, O., & Frame, D. (2022). Influence of Ozone Forcing on 21st Century Southern Hemisphere Surface Westerlies in CMIP6 Models. Geophysical Research Letters, 49(6), e2022GL098252. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL098252

Douglas, H. C., Taormina, R., & Galelli, S. (2019). Pressure-Driven Modeling of Cyber-Physical Attacks on Water Distribution Systems. Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 145(3), 06019001. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)WR.1943-5452.0001038

Taormina, R., Galelli, S., Douglas, H. C., Tippenhauer, N. O., Salomons, E., & Ostfeld, A. (2019). A toolbox for assessing the impacts of cyber-physical attacks on water distribution systems. Environmental Modelling & Software, 112, 46–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2018.11.008

Alter, R. E., Douglas, H. C., Winter, J. M., & Eltahir, E. A. B. (2018). Twentieth Century Regional Climate Change During the Summer in the Central United States Attributed to Agricultural Intensification. Geophysical Research Letters, 45(3), 1586–1594. https://doi.org/10.1002/2017GL075604