Profile
Mr Daniel Williams
PhD Student
Telephone: 01392 725280
Extension: (Streatham) 5280
I am a PhD student interested in studying the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon Titan, under the supervision of Prof. Geoff Vallis, Dr. Will Seviour and Dr. Stephen Thomson and funded by a grant from the STFC. Titan is a unique place within our Solar System, offering the only other place besides Earth with a thick atmosphere that has shown to have an active hydrological cycle with surface lakes, rain and clouds. The key difference being Titan is much colder, a freezing -180˚C, and the role of water is replaced my methane.
Titan has previously been the subject of the NASA Huygens mission and will be visited again in the future by Dragonfly, but there is still very little we understand about the moon's climate and history—observations are hindered by a thick layer of haze that shrouds the moon. I will aim to better understand certain features of Titan's unique atmosphere such as its greenhouse effect and circulation, making use of a modified version of the modular climate model Isca developed here in Exeter.
Background:
- Physics and Astrophysics MSci, University of Birmingham, 2019
- Applied Meteorology & Climatology MSc, University of Birmingham, 2020
Teaching Activities (2022/23):
- NSC1002 - Natural Sciences: Mathematics & Computing
- NSC1004 - Natural Sciences: Experimental Science
You can find me on twitter @meteo_dan