Profile Irina Foss




	Position: PhD Researcher Address: Environmental Research Institute, North Highland College - UHI, Castle Street, Thurso, Caithness, KW14 7JD Tel: (+44) (0)1847 889587 Fax: (+44) (0)1847 890014 E-mail: Irina.Foss@thurso.uhi.ac.uk Joined ERI: October 2006
	Background 2006- Present: PhD: The Influence of Sea Surface Temperature on the Seasonal and Decadal Predictability of Scottish Climate. Environmental Research Institute, UHI Millennium Institute/ University of Aberdeen, Thurso, UK. 2005-2006: MRes in Environmental Biology, St. Andrews University, St. Andrews, UK. Dissertation: Three-Dimensional Distance Sampling: Estimating Krill Abundance from Acoustic Survey Data. 2001-2005: BSc (Hons) in Applied Marine Biology, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. Honours Project: Data Analysis of the Effects of Oil Exploration on Benthic Environment in the UK Sector of the North Sea by Means of Spatiotemporal Correlations. 2000-2001 Biology, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia. Description of the project: Weather in the mid-latitudes is largely unpredictable more than a week or so in advance, whereas fluctuations in the ocean can be predictable over a much longer timescale. To the extent that seasonal and decadal fluctuations of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the North Atlantic are predictable, the potential exists to exploit their influence on the atmosphere to forecast climate variability at the seasonal-to-decadal timescale. Fluctuations in the heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere generate large-scale and long-lasting SST anomalies. These anomalies can propagate and can have a fairly immediate effect on local air temperature and the temperature over neighbouring land, but are also implicated in driving the atmospheric circulation and thus indirectly affecting other environmental variables. The influence of SST on air temperatures over north-western Europe has been found in model reanalysis fields and temperature time series from central England. Nevertheless, such studies have not been extended to local temperature datasets in other regions of the United Kingdom such as Scotland, and to other climatic parameters (e.g., rainfall, wind direction, etc.). In my study, the hypothesis that there is a strong relationship between North Atlantic SST anomalies and various climatic parameters across Scotland is tested by applying different statistical and modelling techniques. Future work will include the incorporation of additional economical or ecological variables into the models to estimate the influence of North Atlantic Conferences/Workshops/Schools attended: International Summer School on High Northern Latitude Climate, September 2007, St. Petersburg State University, the Scientific Foundation “Nansen International Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre”, St. Petersburg, Russia. RMetS Main Conference, September 2007, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. RMetS Student Conference, September 2007, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. International Summer School in Statistical Downscaling, June 2007, University of Łódź, Łódź, Poland. Presentations: Foss, I. Preliminary Analysis of Precipitation and Temperature Variability in Scotland. Poster presented at: - RMetS Student Conference on Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences, Edinburgh, September 2007; - RMetS Main Conference, Edinburgh, September, 2007; - International Summer School on High Northern Latitude Climate, St. Petersburg, September, 2007. Research Interests Use of various statistical and quantitative methods in the environmental science. The variability and predictability of climate at different time scales. Other Info: Membership of the Royal Meteorological Society since May 2007. 2003-2004 Diplôme d’Etudes de Langue Française 2nd Level (D.E.L.F.), French Institute of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK. Return to Top
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