Research Interests and Projects
My research interests are centred on geomagnetism, planetary magnetism, crustal magnetisation, magnetotellurics, geophysical inverse theory, and the core’s dynamics and thermal history.
Current and recently funded research projects include RiftVolc, to improve our understanding of past, present and future volcanism in the Main Ethiopian Rift; SWIGS, Space Weather Impacts on Ground Structures; and Afar Rift Consortium, an inter-disciplinary study of how the Earth’s crust grows at divergent plate boundaries. I also collaborate with DTU Space, Denmark on using geomagnetic, especially low Earth orbit satellite, data to model the flow of liquid iron at the core surface.
My research students enhance and expand this research with studies of sources and variability of magnetic fields external to the Earth, how best to separate them from the magnetic field generated internally within the Earth, investigations of how to improve Indonesian geomagnetic observatory data, studies of the electric field recorded by British geomagnetic observatories, and investigating regional aspects of the flow at the core surface.
New research student projects on offer involve using machine learning to improve space weather forecasts, and studying the South Atlantic Anomaly, an area where the strength of the magnetic field is currently falling, including modelling of its origin deep within the Earth’s core and its space weather implications.
