MISU welcomes Casey Wall as Assistant Professor

We want to welcome Casey Wall who will join us as Assistant professor on November 1st. Casey has recently received an ERC starting grant to study aerosols, tropical convective clouds, and climate.

Casey Wall. Photo: Emma Wall
Casey Wall. Photo: Emma Wall

Casey Wall grew up in Portland, Oregon, USA, and received his PhD degree in 2018 from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. His dissertation was on convective clouds, with focus on their average climate impact and radiation budget.

On the question what made him become interested in atmospheric research, he says: ”My mentor in college was a sea-ice scientist named Alan Thorndike. He introduced me to climate research. I started taking classes about climate modelling and atmospheric radiative transfer, and they really caught my interest. In graduate school I explored different topics, and eventually I developed a particular interest in clouds, aerosols, atmospheric dynamics, and Earth's energy budget.”

After his dissertation, Casey went on for a postdoc at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, and worked in the Climate Sciences research area.  After three years in California, he accepted a 2-year postdoc position at the Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, where he has worked until now.

At MISU

Casey’s research will focus on how aerosols affect convective clouds, physical mechanisms and climate impact. He is looking forward to working together with everyone in the department and connecting with the scientists. It is not clear yet which courses he will teach, but the first year is mostly spent taking SU’s pedagogical courses. He is interested in cloud physics, remote sensing, atmospheric dynamics, and climate dynamics.

ERC starting grant

Casey recently received an ERC starting grant for 5 years to study aerosols, tropical convective clouds, and climate. The grant includes funding for a PhD student and two postdoc positions. In addition to that, the in-house start-up funding will provide positions for one PhD student and one postdoc.

Casey is excited to build up this new group of researchers. One of the components for the ERC-funded project is an aircraft campaign in the tropical western Pacific. They may be joined in this effort by the group at University of Oslo where Casey worked most recently.

Casey describes the campaign: “Our goal is to infer the supersaturation in oceanic convective clouds as accurately as possible to determine if changes in aerosols can invigorate the cloud updrafts. To infer supersaturation, we plan to measure the cloud-droplet size distribution, vertical wind speed, and temperature. We are also discussing the possibility of using a new instrument developed by our collaborators that measures temperature and humidity with high resolution and accuracy. However, there are still some logistical challenges to get this instrument ready for an aircraft deployment.”