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Principal Investigator: Paul Kushner

Hello and welcome to my group's web space!

I study many aspects of atmospheric dynamics, atmospheric circulation, and climate change. From 2013-2019 I led the Canadian Sea Ice and Snow Evolution Network (CanSISE.ca), which studied sea ice and snow processes and their connection to climate. I recently served as Vice-President, President, and Past-President of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS.ca).

Recently I’ve been exploring engineering applications of climate science with some good colleagues at the University of Toronto Centre for Climate Science and Engineering.

I am also the Director for The Collaborative Platform for CanESM (CP4C), which partners with Environment and Climate Change Canada to enable collaborative development and application of the Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM) for the broader research community.

Here's more information about my group's work. 

Contact me to learn more about research opportunities in my group.

Students

  • Aleksandra Elias Chereque (former UG researcher, now Ph.D.): drivers of snowfall extremes in reanalysis products.

  • Anson Cheung (Ph.D.): assessing the climate impacts of hypothetical nuclear conflict scenarios using CanESM..

  • Luke Fraser-Leach (Ph.D.): representation of aerosol microphysics in earth system models and detectability of the atmospheric circulation response to regional anthropogenic aerosol forcing.

  • Lucas Prates (Ph.D.): researching the value of regionally-refined Earth System Models in the representation and projection of midlatitude extreme winds under climate change.

  • Eylon Vakrat (Ph.D.): understanding extreme temperature events with tools from dynamical systems theory.

Postdoctoral fellows:

  • Geon-Il Kim, Ph.D.: developing climate emulators to evaluate the climate impacts of different emissions across diverse future scenarios.

Technical Staff

  • Michael Morris, Ph.D.: Software development for the Collaborative Platform for CanESM (CP4C) and technical support for other earth system modelling work within the group. Mike is a graduate of the group.

Current collaborators and our projects

  • Gudrun Magnusdottir (professor at University of California, Irvine): causes and consequences of polar amplification (PAMIP)

  • Oya Mercan (professor at the University of Toronto): impact of climate change on wind loads on the built environment

  • I. Daniel Posen (professor at the University of Toronto): how climate change mitigation strategies are influenced by projected climate change

Kushner group alumni

  • Alexandre Audette (former Ph.D., now postdoc at UC Santa Cruz): mechanisms of poleward heat transport and Arctic amplification

  • Adeline Bichet (former postdoc, now payroll accounts management at AGORI)

  • Russell Blackport (former Ph.D. student, postdoc at U. Exeter, UK, now research scientist at ECCC): how the atmosphere responds to sea ice loss in the coupled climate system.

  • Alex Cabaj (former Ph.D. student): characterizing variability of snow falling on sea ice.

  • Ben Cash (former co-supervised PDF at NOAA/GFDL, now Research Scientist at COLA)

  • Lilian Chan (former undergraduate research student): the University of Toronto climate downscaling workflow (UTCDW) and snow water equivalent analysis.

  • Cassie Chanen (former M.Env. student): the University of Toronto climate downscaling workflow (UTCDW) and heat impacts on energy infrastructure.

  • Gina Chou (former Ph.D. student): analyzing winds from ESA Aeolus’s spaceborne wind lidar.

  • Etienne Dunn-Sigouin (former co-supervised PDF at the University of Bergen, now a researcher at NORCE in Bergen, Norway)

  • Robert Fajber (former Ph.D. student, then NOAA CGC Fellow (postdoctoral fellow) at U Washington, now Prof. at McGill University)

  • Chris Fletcher (former PDF at U. Toronto, now Prof. at U. Waterloo)

  • Holly Han (former undergraduate research student, now Ph.D. student at McGill University)

  • Steven Hardiman (former PDF at U. Toronto, now Research Scientist at the UKMO)

  • Stephanie Hay (former Ph.D. and PDF at U. Toronto, now at the University of Exeter)

  • Haruki Hirasawa (former Ph.D. student): how the atmospheric general circulation, particularly Sahel precipitation, responds to aerosol forcing.

  • Kyuho Lee (former undergraduate research student, now graduate student in Department of Physics at Stanford University)

  • Chengyun Li (former undergraduate research student, now graduate student at the University of Toronto, Mississauga)

  • Maria Fernanda Lozano (former UG, now PhD. student at UofT)

  • Holly Maness (former PDF at U. Toronto, now PDF at UC Berkeley)

  • Dia Martinez Gracey (former undergraduate research student, completing B.Sc. in Physics at McMaster U.)

  • Jeremy McGibbon (former undergraduate research student, then Ph.D. student at U. Washington, now Machine Learning Scientist at Vulcan, Inc.)

  • Yara Mohajerani (former undergraduate research student, now Ph.D. student at UC Irvine).

  • Thomas Reichler (former PDF at NOAA/GFDL, now Prof. at U. Utah)

  • Michael Sigmond (former PDF at U. Toronto, now Research Scientist at Environment Canada)

  • Karen Smith (former Ph.D. student, now Assistant Prof., teaching stream, at University of Toronto Scarborough)

  • Erin Sauvé (former undergraduate research student): snow on sea ice characteristics on multi-year and first-year ice using NESOSIM.

  • Neil Tandon (former postdoc, now Assistant Prof. at York University)

  • Catie Terrey (former M.Sc. student): atmospheric heat transport and stratospheric circulation responses to Arctic sea ice loss in CESM1-WACCM-SC and CESM1-CAM5.

  • Dmitry Vyushin (former Ph.D. student, now Director in RBC Capital Markets)

  • Lei Wang (former Ph.D. student, now Prof. at Fudan University, Shanghai)

  • Oliver Watt-Meyer (former Ph.D. student, now Machine Learning Scientist, Climate Modeling, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence): how planetary waves interact with the polar vortex and what it means for weather systems.

  • Jack Wong (former Ph.D. student): computational fluid dynamics for wind engineering and assessing wind-load effects of climate change. (I am Jack’s cosupervisor, his main supervisor is Prof. Oya Mercan in the Dept. of Civil and Mineral Engineering at U of T.)

  • Xuesong Zhang (former M.Sc. student, then Ph.D. student in Prof. Dylan Jones group here in U of T Physics, postdoc with Prof. Posen, now working in financial sector)