My research revolves around understanding the dynamics that control the changing physical state of continental shelf seas and the open ocean, and also developing realistic models that can useful predictions. With students and colleagues, I am developing models that are used to forecast storm surges and currents along the eastern seaboard of Atlantic Canada. I am also working on models that can resolve and forecast the motion of ocean eddies (rotating lenses of surface water, about 100 km wide and 1 km deep) that fill the western part of many ocean basins.

To better understand how the ocean works, and make useful predictions with models, it is necessary to make the best use of available data. Fortunately this is an exciting time for oceanographers with, for example, global coverage of surface properties from satellites (e.g. ocean height, temperature, roughness) and also vertical profiles of temperature and salinity of the top 2 km of the global ocean from the armada of almost 3000 autonomous Argo floats.

To make best use of these new data streams, and to assimilate them into models, it is necessary to develop novel statistical techniques. Thus I am very interested in applied statistics with a particular focus on extremes and data assimilation.

To obtain more details on my ongoing research activities, please see the top bar.