
Dr Alexander Farnsworth
BSC(Cardiff), MSc(Bristol), PhD(Uni.Reading)
Current positions
Senior Research Associate
School of Geographical Sciences
Contact
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Research interests
My current research focus is investigating large-scale controls on past, present and future climate change and how changes in past environments can inform future climate change. Through using a comprehensive modelling approach we can examine the role perturbations in topography, bathymetry, solar insolation, ice sheets and Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) through time have driven the changing dynamics of the ocean and atmosphere, redistributing energy and momentum, seen in the proxy-data records seen in many oceanic and terrestrial proxy datasets.
My particular interests centres on the role of the hydrological cycle in climate change, specifically on precipitation dynamics and the role of monsoon systems.
My previous research looked into the dynamics of the central African monsoon system and interannual variability in the monsoon using model and observational data. The role of land surface – atmospheric interactions on precipitation resulting from land surface change under future climate regimes was a key focus of this research.
I am currently hold a visiting Professorship at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
I am also an associate editor of Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology.
Projects and supervisions
Research projects
Climate and carbon dioxide during the end-Permian hyperthermal biosphere crisis
Principal Investigator
Managing organisational unit
School of Geographical SciencesDates
01/01/2023 to 30/09/2023
Publications
Selected publications
02/10/2019Past East Asian monsoon evolution controlled by paleogeography, not CO2
Science Advances
Absolute age and temperature of belemnite rostra
Global and Planetary Change
Asteroid impact, not volcanism, caused the end-Cretaceous dinosaur extinction
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Recent publications
14/01/2025Evaluating migration hypotheses for the extinct Glyptotherium using ecological niche modeling
Ecography
Late Miocene weakening of the South Asian Monsoon
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
Obliquity and precession forcing of the amplitude of millennial-scale East Asian monsoon variability during the late Miocene
Science Bulletin
Absolute age and temperature of belemnite rostra
Global and Planetary Change
An integrative framework reveals widespread gene flow during the early radiation of oaks and relatives in Quercoideae (Fagaceae)
Journal of Integrative Plant Biology