Tom started at Kings in 2024, working with Tom Matthews on detecting and projecting Unseen Climate Extremes - record-breaking extreme climate events that are unprecedented in the historical record but present potentially catastrophic risks to society. He works with an interdisciplinary team of physical climate scientists and social scientists to explore extreme and worst-case scenario climate change under deep uncertainty, exploring the boundaries of plausibility and the potential impacts of climate extremes on society.

Before joining King’s, Tom worked at the Grantham Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield as part of an interdisciplinary team to study the potential impact of high-impact, low-likelihood (HILL) extreme climate change on urban infrastructure and regional populations, developing policy-relevant research to inform climate adaptation decisions in Earth’s most vulnerable regions.

Tom completed his PhD in Climate Dynamics at the Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science (ICAS) at the University of Leeds where he used multiple climate models to study the mid-latitude large-scale atmospheric circulation response to climate change drivers such as greenhouse gasses and aerosols.

Research

• Unseen (unprecedented) climate extremes
• Extreme and worst-case scenario climate change
• High-impact, low-likelihood (HILL) climate change
• Compound climate extremes
• Deep uncertainty
• Climate projections and modelling
• Atmospheric dynamics

Tom's research focuses on detecting and projecting unseen (unprecedented) climate extremes and understanding the plausibility and possibility of potentially catastrophic record-breaking weather and climate events under climate change.

Further details

See Tom's research profile