Dr. Charles Jackson is a research scientist at the Institute for Geophysics at The University of Texas at Austin. Charles’ research program concerns the development of computational, statistical, and scientific strategies for assessing the credibility of numerical model predictions of the Earth system’s forced response to changes in radiative forcings. His scientific expertise is in coupled climate system dynamics, atmospheric physics, and problems where uncertain physics at the smallest scales affects large-scale system behaviors. Some of the questions he has addressed concern abrupt transitions in climate, effect of cloud feedbacks on global warming, ice sheet contributions to sea level rise, and observational tests of uncertain ocean mixing physics.
I mainly work with graduate students and postdocs, but I have also mentored a few undergraduate students. Climate system science involves challenges in all branches of science and questions concerning how climate may affect the economy are also becoming important to address. It can be very valuable for undergraduates to gain some exposure to these topics so that they know better what their options are when they select a suitable graduate program. It can be quite daunting to pick a graduate program based solely on what you read about on the web. More importantly it would be good to know what gets you excited about this kind of work. I personally love the role of models to address fundamental questions about how climate works. The great thing about the climate sciences is that there are a lot of open questions and opportunities to get involved no matter the person's background.
