21 April 2026: I gave a short talk on the relationship between the polar vortex and US cold air outbreaks in this month’s Climate Central webinar, which you can watch on YouTube.
19 April 2026: Using ECMWF IFS data, I’ve implemented a North Atlantic weather regime classification following the same method we introduced for North America, yielding NAO+, Atlantic Ridge, NAO– and Scandinavian Blocking (plus No Regime = nearer climatology than any regime). This isn’t the same as what ECMWF use operationally, so it will be interesting to compare differences.
11 February 2026: Delighted to say I’ve been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society (FRMetS) “in recognition of substantial contributions to meteorology in research and development, public education and outreach, services to RMetS, teaching and publications”.
4 February 2026: archive of ERA5 10 hPa 60°N zonal-mean zonal wind plots added!
30 January 2026: short article published in the January APARC Newsletter on a new SNAP project I’m leading on seasonal forecasts and the stratosphere https://aparc-climate.org/newsletter
20 January 2026: I gave a talk at the RMetS Scottish Local Centre in Edinburgh on stratospheric influences on surface weather and climate. You can watch the recording on the RMetS YouTube channel.
10 January 2026: Paper with Lorenzo Polvani (Columbia) investigating summertime Greenland High regime trends published in GRL!
9 January 2026: Plots showing the stratospheric wave reflection index in daily subseasonal ECMWF IFS forecasts added.
7 January 2026: Updated North American weather regimes dataset for 1979–2025 published on Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18174360. Plots of the Weather Regime Index on this website also updated!
5 December 2025: St Andrews hosted a two-day workshop on “Connecting expertise in climate science across Scotland”, where I presented our work on recent regime trends.
1 December 2025: I signed off as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Weather after 5 years and 3 months, handing over to Ben Maybee. I’ve written a short Editorial in the December issue.
27 November 2025: Our project “Developing an evidence basis for wind-driven public garden closures” was awarded funding by the University’s Impact fund.
22 November 2025: ‘Chiclet’ plots added to regime forecast pages, showing the last 90 ensemble mean forecasts.
20 November 2025: I was quoted in The Washington Post regarding forecasts of a potentially record-early SSW.
17 October 2025: I featured in this week’s edition of the University’s Research Spotlight.
16 October 2025: Victoria Sinclair (University of Helsinki) visited us this week, and gave a seminar on “Response of the Northern Hemisphere circulation to future changes in sea surface temperature and sea ice cover”. Thanks for visiting, Victoria!
15 October 2025: New PhD project through the Iapetus DTP now online! If you’re interested, please get in touch.
13 October 2025: I spoke to the Daily Mail (online) about the upcoming seasonal forecast.
3 October 2025: More comments from me on air pressure influencing the boiling point of water and impact on tea picked up by the Daily Mail (online).
2 October 2025: I spoke to BBC Radio Scotland about Storm Amy (and its extremely low pressure perhaps contributing to substandard Friday night cups of tea in the northwest!). Also picked up in this BBC News article and here about the effect on tea!
29 September 2025: New PhD students Thomas Breitburd and Maxwell Jackson joined us as co-advisees, lead-supervised by Ioana Colfescu as part of NCAS St Andrews. Welcome, Thomas and Max!
22 September 2025: New PhD student Freya Gibbon joined us, working with Graeme MacGilchrist, Mike Byrne and myself on atmosphere–ocean dynamics in the Southern Ocean. Welcome, Freya!
8 September 2025: I visited National Taiwan University and the Taiwan Central Weather Administration last week, along with NCAS–St Andrews lead Ioana Colfescu, as part of our joint seed funding project with Yu-Chiao Liang at NTU.
14 August 2025: the BAMS State of the Climate in 2024 report was published – I contributed to a section on the Arctic atmosphere (led by Amy Butler, NOAA) in Chapter 5
5 August 2025: paper led by Robert Lee (Reading) published in GRL, investigating the weather regime response to the 2018 and 2019 SSWs using data from the SNAPSI experiments.
4 August 2025: I spoke to BBC Radio Scotland about Storm Floris.
14 July 2025: A busy couple of weeks as I attended the RMetS Annual Weather and Climate conference in Manchester, followed by the UK Climate Dynamics workshop at the Met Office, where I presented our work on the response of the NAO to CO2 forcing.
27 June 2025: Shih-Ni Zhou, a research student from National Taiwan University, finished her 3-week visit to St Andrews, working with me and Ioana Colfescu supported by our joint grant from NTU and St Andrews. Thanks for visiting and for your really interesting work, Shih-Ni!
21 May 2025: Kanzis Mattu (PhD student at Strathclyde) visited us and gave a seminar in to the COASt group. Thanks for visiting, Kanzis!
15 May 2025: paper led by Michael Schutte (PhD student at Uppsala) on the dynamics of stratospheric wave reflection events over the North Pacific published in WCD.
12 May 2025: I wrote an article with Matt Patterson in The Conversation on this year’s unusually dry and sunny spring in the UK.
7 May 2025: paper led by Ivan Mitevski (Princeton) on the response of the NAO to CO2 published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science.
28 April 2025: North American year-round weather regime archive updated through 2024.
21 April 2025: North Atlantic wintertime weather regime archive updated through winter 2024/25.
18 April 2025: NAM plot archive updated through 2023/24 and extended back to 1940.
16 April 2025: North American weather regime forecast updates now automated and occurring daily after 0800 UK time.
28 March 2025: I attended the QSQ workshop in Cambridge, presenting work on NAM biases and initiating a new SNAP project analysing seasonal models.
7 February 2025: the second SNAP subseasonal biases paper, led by Chaim Garfinkel, was published in WCD
5 February 2025: I visited the University of Edinburgh and gave the Global Change Seminar on NAM biases.
15 January 2025: I visited the University of Exeter to give a seminar on our work on NAM biases in climate models.
14 January 2025: paper led by Jaewon Lee (PhD student at Columbia) on stratosphere–troposphere ozone transport published in GRL
7 January 2025: Yu-Chiao Liang (NTU) visited us to kickstart our recently-awarded seed funding project between NTU and St Andrews.
19 December 2024: our proposal was awarded funding through a joint seed funding scheme between National Taiwan University and the University of St Andrews!
16 December 2024: paper published in Weather on the double-SSW winter of 2023/24.
12 December 2024: St Leonard’s scholarship for our PhD project ‘Westerly winds overturning oceans’ now live.
27 November 2024: I spoke to MailOnline about naming winter storms.
15 November 2024: Iapetus-funded PhD projects now live.
24 September 2024: I gave an invited talk on “The global climate: where we are, where we’re going, and what that means” at a greenwashing risk roundtable dinner at Stephenson Harwood LLP, London.
8 August 2024: I spoke to New Scientist about the ongoing Antarctic stratospheric polar vortex disruption.
7 August 2024: paper with Lorenzo Polvani examining NAM biases in seasonal climate models published in QJRMS
30 July 2024: article published in The Conversation with Hayley Fowler and Paul Davies on understanding extremes in a changing climate.
30 July 2024: preprint of a new paper led by Michael Schutte (PhD student in Uppsala) on the dynamics of stratospheric wave reflection over the North Pacific, is now online on egusphere https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2024-2240.
16 July 2024: I spoke to The i newspaper regarding the statistics for summer 2024 in the UK so far, and whether it’s really been as wet as some headlines have suggested
3 July 2024: our paper, “Modulation of U.S. tornado activity by year-round North American weather regimes” (led by Mike Tippett with Kelsey Malloy), has now been published online in MWR.
1 July 2024: I started my faculty position as Lecturer in Atmospheric Science in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of St Andrews, Scotland!