Dr Chris Wilson

My research focuses on the physics of the climate system, its temporal evolution (climate dynamics), the formal relationship between climate observations and dynamical understanding, and the predictability of both climate dynamics and climate metrics—defined as measurable, meaningful functions of the system’s state. “Meaningful” extends beyond scientific insight to include socioeconomic relevance, such as improving forecasts of coastal flooding by identifying ocean measurements that reduce uncertainty in future projections.

Central to these interests is nonlinear dynamics, encompassing processes like shear-flow instability and the formation of mesoscale ocean eddies—turbulent structures on scales of roughly 1–100 km and lasting days to weeks. These eddies, analogous to atmospheric weather systems, play a key role in shaping ocean circulation by transferring energy from wind and buoyancy forcing into momentum, sharpening boundary currents such as the Gulf Stream, and redistributing heat and freshwater throughout the climate system. Their inherently nonlinear nature links directly to questions of climate predictability and the design of meaningful and predictable metrics.