Dr Callum Munday
Biography
I am a climate scientist and a physical geographer. My research focuses climate and climate change in Africa – the continent likely to endure the some of the worst effects of rapidly rising global temperatures.
Before joining St John’s, I was a postdoctoral scientist on the REACH water security programme (East African climate change) and on the NERC funded DRYCAB programme (Southern African rainfall) based in the Geography department at Oxford. As part of these projects, I led several international field campaigns including in Kenya, South Africa and Zambia. During my postdoctoral research, I held visiting positions at the UK Met Office (2020) and at the University of Cape Town (2021). In 2021, I was appointed a Fellow by Special Election at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.
Collaborations with universities and national meteorological services in Africa have made much of my research possible.
Teaching
I teach across a broad range of the geography syllabus, including core physical and environmental geography papers, methodological and conceptual papers, and climate science subjects.
I supervise graduate students focusing on African climate systems and change, including students who take part in, and analyse data from, field experiments.
Research Interests
My research focuses on African climate and climate change. I am particularly interested in the physical processes which lead to rainfall variability and change.
In Africa, there are large blind spots in observational networks which complicate efforts to understand regional climate and rainfall. After a PhD which focused exclusively on model simulations, I became interested in how we can combine insights from model experiment with new sources of observations to advance our understanding of regional climate. As part of this effort, I have helped run field campaigns to measure important climate processes in Kenya (riftjet.com, MASIKA) and South Africa (kapex.com) and Zambia (DRYCAB). On the modelling side, I have worked with the UK Met Office to design model experiments to evaluate the role of topography in African climate.
Some interesting findings from this research relate to the role of the East African Rift System in shaping African hydroclimate and the part played by the Kalahari Desert in the southern African rainy season.
Selected Publications
- Munday, C. N. Savage, R. G. Jones, and R. Washington, 2023: Valley formation aridifies East Africa and elevates Congo Basin rainfall. Nature, 615, 276–279, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05662-5.
- Munday, C., and Coauthors, 2024: The Turkana Jet Diurnal Cycle in Observations and Reanalysis. J. Climate, 37, 4633–4645, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23-0325.1.
- Warner, J. L., Munday, C., & Engelstaedter, S. (2024). Resolving the Turkana Jet—Impact of model resolution in simulating channel flow and inversions. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129, e2023JD040299. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JD040299
- Munday and Coauthors, 2022: Observations of the Turkana Jet and the East African Dry Tropics: The RIFTJet Field Campaign. Bull Am Meteorol Soc, 103, E1828–E1842, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-21-0214.
- Attwood, K., R. Washington, and C. Munday, 2024: The Southern African Heat Low: Structure, Seasonal and Diurnal Variability, and Climatological Trends. J Clim, 37, 3037–3058, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-23.
Awards and Distinctions
- RGS Gilchrist fieldwork Award – Kalahari Heat Experiment (2024)
- John Fell Fund – KAPEX - Kalahari Atmospheric Processes Experiment (2024)
- Met Office Academic Partnership (MOAP) collaboration fund (2020)
- Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) PhD studentship (2014-2019)
- Met Office Academic Partnership (MOAP) CASE studentship (2016-2018)