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Matthew Huber


Associate 
Professor
Earth 
and Atmospheric Sciences
Purdue University  
huberm@purdue.edu

I am interested in past, present and future climate, the mechanisms that govern climate, and the different forms that climates can take on Earth and other planets.  Most of my work so far has concentrated on the issue of how "stuff" (e.g. passive tracers, water vapor, heat, spores) goes from the tropics toward the Poles, and specifically with an emphasis on how these processes operates during greenhouse climates (e.g. the Eocene ~55-35 million years ago).  I will be continuing to explore these general questions, in various forms, for the foreseeable future and I encourage anyone seriously interested to get in contact with me. My current specific research direction is into the relationship between severe weather and climate change, and the integrated role of storms (such as hurricanes) on heat (and other tracer) transports. More >>

Current CV

Research Statement

I study past warm climates in Earth’s history. Why study past warm climates? I believe that our understanding of modern and future climate is only as secure as our understanding of past climate. It is risky to predict future global warming without testing climate models in the past.

I find unsettling the fact that the warm climates that dominated the past 90 million years are largely unexplained. In my research I’ve tried to understand the “greenhouse” climates of the Paleogene by applying state-of-the-art global climate models. The tools I use are the same models used for understanding modern climate, but with suitable modifications for paleoclimates. This work draws on atmosphere-ocean dynamics, paleoceanography, geology, paleontology, and computer modelling. As described below, this work involves cutting-edge computer modelling of climate and is quite computing intensive.

One of my research foci is understanding the nature of past warm climates, and specifically, the causes of the Paleogene’s (~60-30 Ma) defining and as yet unexplained climatic features:
1. warm extratropical winter temperatures (>4°C in polar winter)
2. and apparently stable tropical temperatures (<32°C).
Either some dynamical mechanism increased poleward heat transport substantially in the Paleogene, (e.g., increased thermohaline circulation), or some radiative forcing is missing from our understanding of these warm climates. A resolution to the question of dynamical mechanism vs. radiative forcing is critical. Not only is this necessary for understanding past warm climates (e.g., Eocene, Cretaceous), but also for evaluating predictions of future climate change produced by climate models.
To date, my approach to this problem is to employ the latest version of the Climate System Model developed at the National Center for Atmospheric Research to model Eocene conditions. My research using fully and iteratively coupled global models addresses fundamental questions including:
1. Where was deep water formed in the Eocene, and how much heat was transported in the atmosphere and ocean?
2. Are there multiple equilibria/catastrophes in the thermohaline circulation, as posited both by modelers and paleoceanographers alike?
3. Are there mechanisms (“thermostats”) for tropical temperature regulation?

The field of coupled global climate modelling is very fertile; opportunities abound for applying these tools to past climates and toward future climate. Below I list some of the issues that I would like to pursue over the next 2-5 years. Students interested in graduate work in these areas should contact me.