Profile

I am a Tropical Meteorologist, and I study big storms which develop in the sea south of India. These can be very dangerous when they hit the coast where people live, and they are getting worse because of climate change. If we have good forecasts of the storms, we can tell where they are going to hit the coast so that people can be evacuated safely. So I work on improving weather forecasts of storms.

In particular I am studying how the sea and the air interact with each other, because that’s something forecasters don’t usually think about, but if we know more about it we might get better weather forecasts.

I am working with scientists who are in charge of weather forecasting in India, but I only started my current job a few months ago, so I haven’t got to travel there yet because of the lockdown! I’m hoping to go there early next year.

However my favourite part of being a researcher is usually the travelling you get to do. In my last job, when I studied volcanoes, I went to talk about my work in Italy, Romania, and the USA! In the USA I got to see an eclipse. I also went to Iceland for three weeks to collect rock samples, and got to drive around in a big truck and go camping. Me and my friend got invited into the house of an old farmer who wouldn’t let us leave until we’d eaten an entire cake – apparently anything less than half a cake each was very rude.