Rebecca Varney

About me

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher working with Stefano Manzoni on the CALIPSO and SMILE projects.

My research is focused on the modelling of biogeochemical processes and how we can mathematically represent the role of microbes in global soil carbon cycling. More broadly, my research interests are in quantifying and understanding soil carbon cycling under climate change. The aim is to investigate whether explicitly representing microbes within global climate models improves on our current representation of soil carbon and understanding of the sensitivity of this carbon in the future.

My background is in mathematics, where I have a PhD from the University of Exeter (UK) with supervisors Peter Cox and Sarah Chadburn. My PhD research focused on soil carbon simulation, projections and feedbacks in Earth system models (CMIP6, CMIP5), as well as the use of mathematical and statistical techniques to constrain future uncertainty in land carbon feedbacks. At the University of Exeter I also did a Postdocoral Researcher position working with Stephen Sitch, Pierre Friedlingstein and Nina Raoult. Here I was involved in the 4C (ERC) and LUISA (ESA) projects and focussed on improving model projections of the land carbon cycle, through both constraint techniques and the use of Earth observation data with the UK land surface model (JULES).