About me
I am an atmospheric scientist with a focus on stratospheric dynamics, stratospheric chemistry, and climate science. My work scrutinizes mechanistic explanations for emergent climate phenomena. I have focused on the bottom of the hierarchy of climate models, working to improve the occasional instances in which our conceptual explanations for atmospheric phenomena (i.e., how we think about the atmosphere) do not align with the quantitative theories on which they are nominally based. Questions like: Why does tropical ozone have an interior maximum? How does photochemistry lead to cascading responses of the ozone layer to perturbations? Why does the tropical Quasi-Biennial Oscillation vanish below 70 hPa? These results have implications for interpreting comprehensive atmospheric models and understanding the climate response to perturbations such as global warming and ozone depletion.
In October 2024, I began as a postdoctoral researcher working with Peter Hitchcock at Cornell University. We are working on a project called “From surface warming to stratospheric change”, in which we seek to understand how surface warming—both mean and patterned—affects the tropical tropopause layer and stratosphere, thinking carefully about the roles of convection, waves, ozone, and water vapor.
Before this, I was an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences with Ed Gerber at New York University. We analyzed the ozone layer, including its basic structure and response to perturbations such as ozone-depleting substances and global warming. We developed new theoretical understanding of why tropical ozone has an interior maximum, how the ozone layer adjusts photochemically to perturbations, and how tropospheric expansion is essential to understanding the ozone layer response to surface warming.
My Ph.D. is in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences from Princeton University where I was advised by Stephan Fueglistaler. We revisited why the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation vanishes below 70 hPa. The accepted interpretation based on the classical QBO model was found to rely on circular reasoning concerning the lower boundary condition. Breaking the circularity led us to realize that the QBO in the lowermost stratosphere vanishes because it is damped by lateral momentum exchange. Under global warming, this lower boundary should shift upwards along with the expanding troposphere, leading to a weakening of the QBO at any given altitude, yet the large internal variability of the QBO appears to have obscured this signal thus far.
I perform climate outreach with colleagues through Climate Up Close.
Happenings
December 2024: Gave an invited talk at AGU Fall Meeting 2024 on Protection without Poison: Why tropical ozone number density peaks around 26 km. Thanks to the conveners: Paul Newman, Natalya Kramarova, and Bill Randel. Also presented another talk (The Double Dip: How tropospheric expansion counteracts increases in extratropical stratospheric ozone under global warming) and a poster (On the complementarity of extreme event costs attributed to changes in frequency versus intensity).
November 2024: Presented the scientific consensus on climate change with Climate Up Close to the New Hampshire Association of Conservation Commissions.
October 2024: Moved to Ithaca to begin a postdoc with Peter Hitchcock at Cornell University! We will be funded by the NSF grant we co-wrote called “From surface warming to stratospheric change”. The project includes co-PI Jonathan Lin and unfunded collaborators Peter Blossey, Blaž Gasparini, and Ed Gerber.
September 2024: Presented “Protection without poison: why tropical ozone maximizes in the interior of the atmosphere” at the NYU CAOS seminar. Thus concludes my fruitful postdoc with Ed Gerber.
September 2024: New paper published: Match, A., E.P. Gerber, S. Fueglistaler, 2024: Beyond self-healing: stabilizing and destabilizing photochemical adjustment of the ozone layer. Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 10305–10322. doi
September 2024: Visited the University of Washington Department of Atmospheric and Climate Sciences for three days, presenting “Protection without poison: why tropical ozone maximizes in the interior of the atmosphere”. Much appreciation to Peter Blossey for hosting my visit and to Clayton Sasaki for his hospitality.
August 2024: Presented the scientific consensus on climate change to New Hampshirites on our 2024 Climate Up Close tour, with 6 events reaching 200 people at churches, a synagogue, a museum, and an environmental center. Press coverage by Granite Geek and NHPR.
July 2024: Presented “Beyond self-healing: Stabilizing and destabilizing photochemical adjustment of the ozone layer” at the Quadrennial Ozone Symposium in Boulder, CO. Recording on Youtube
June 2024: Presented “Protection without poison: why ozone maximizes in the interior of the atmosphere” at AMS AOFD/MA meeting in Burlington, VT. | Recording on Youtube
June 2024: Received an AGU 2023 Editor’s Citation for excellence in reviewing of JGR: Atmospheres.
June 2024: New pre-print posted: “Protection without poison: Why tropical ozone maximizes in the interior of the atmosphere” for discussion in ACP. Feedback and comments welcome.
April 2024: Presented “Protection without poison: why ozone maximizes in the interior of the atmosphere” at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory OCP Seminar. Thanks to Dhruv Balwada, Sam Bartusek, and Clare Singer for helping to organize the visit. | Recording on Youtube
February 2024: Presented “Explaining ozone layer structure and self-healing” at NASA GISS Lunch Seminar Series. Thanks to Clara Orbe and Maggie DeLessio for hosting my visit. | Recording on Youtube
January 2024: Co-led an informal workshop at Princeton University, “Extreme Event Attribution: A critical review” with Ben Schaffer.
January 2024: New pre-print posted: “Beyond self-healing: Stabilizing and destabilizing photochemical adjustment of the ozone layer”. Feedback and comments welcome.
January 2024: Presented “Beyond self-healing: Stabilizing and destabilizing photochemical adjustment of the ozone layer” to the Princeton AOS Dynamics Seminar.
April 2023: Presented “Understanding the stratospheric ozone response to global warming” at the 2023 EGU General Assembly session on Dynamics and Chemistry of the Upper Troposphere and Lower Stratosphere.
April 2023: Presented “Simple models of stratospheric ozone photochemistry” while visiting several institutions around Europe, with many thanks to my hosts at each stop: University of Reading (Keith Shine), Cambridge University (Alison Ming), Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (Hauke Schmidt), Free University of Berlin (Stephan Pfahl), and Institute of Atmospheric Physics and the University of Munich (Thomas Birner and Hella Garny).
March 2023: Commenced a five-week academic tour around Europe by participating in the QBO workshop at Oxford. Gave a talk on the buffer zone of the QBO and its sensitivity to global warming. Thanks to the organizers for a splendid workshop!
February 2023: Presented “Revisiting simple models of ozone photochemistry: structure, self-healing, and sensitivity to global warming” at Harvard ClimaTea. Thanks to Stephen Bourguet for organizing the visit.
December 2022: Presented a talk at the AGU Fall Meeting entitled “Revisiting the ozone response to global warming” in the session on Stratospheric and Tropospheric Composition Changes: Observations and Modeling of Special Events, Feedback Mechanisms, and Long-Term Trends.
November 2022: Presented at the Columbia University SEAS Colloquium in Climate Science: “Understanding how stratospheric ozone responds to global warming”. Thanks to Simon Lee and Lorenzo Polvani for helping arrange the visit.
November 2022: Visited Professor Peter Hitchcock and numerous undergraduate mentors at the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department at Cornell University, where I presented recent work: “Understanding how stratospheric ozone responds to global warming”.
October 2022: Presented a poster, “Understanding the stratospheric ozone response to global warming”, at the SPARC General Assembly (Boulder hub).
September 2022: First paper from my postdoc is out: Match, A., E.P. Gerber, 2022: Tropospheric expansion under global warming reduces tropical lower stratospheric ozone. Geophysical Research Letters. 49, 19, 1-12. doi
August 2022: Presented “Ozone at Spectroclim: Why does ozone have an interior maximum? How does ozone respond to global warming?” at From Spectroscopy to Climate hosted by the Princeton University Center for Theoretical Science.
August 2022: Climate Up Close toured Central New Jersey, with public events at the Somerset County Environmental Education Center and Princeton Friends Meeting.
June 2022: Presented “The Decade the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation Faltered: Have disruptions provoked a crisis in QBO science?” at 23rd Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics in Breckenridge, CO, USA. Recording from AMS | Recording on Youtube
March 2022: Climate Up Close presented to the Good Food Institute, a non-profit working to accelerate the alternative protein industry.
March 2022: Presented my Ph.D. work on “The Unified Internal Dynamics and Global Interactions of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation” to my new colleagues at the NYU Center for Atmosphere Ocean Science.
February 2022: Co-presented a climate outreach talk “Setting climate activism in a broader context of environmental and social action” at Chisuk Emuna Congregation in Harrisburg, PA along with Ben Schaffer and Emma Ignaszewski.
January 2022: Presented an invited talk on “The Buffer Zone of the QBO: Theory of Formation and Future Projections” at the 21st Conference on the Middle Atmosphere at the 2022 AMS Annual Meeting.
January 2022: Our climate science communication tour with Climate Up Close in Florida’s Forgotten Coast reached hundreds of folks in Port St. Joe, Eastpoint, Tallahassee, Wakulla Springs, and Apalachicola. Local news coverage
December 2021: Began my NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences working with Ed Gerber at NYU.
December 2021: The final paper from my Ph.D. work with Stephan Fueglistaler is out in Journal of Climate: "Large Internal Variability Dominates over Global Warming Signal in Observed Lower Stratospheric QBO Amplitude". Link
November 2021: I created this new website. Thanks to Henri Drake for providing a tutorial to our department.