Maynooth University Faculty of Science & Engineering

Dr. Michelle Mc Crystall is a climate scientist who specialises on polar climates and large scale climate dynamics. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge and British Antarctic Survey investigating teleconnection patterns between the tropical regions and the Arctic and having worked in numerous international institutions (Exeter, Canada, New Zealand) has built and developed her research areas. Her research focuses on developing and utilising global climate model data and comparing this with observation data to assess what drives and how the Arctic climate is expected to change in the future. More specifically, Michelle, uses these models to determine the variability of Arctic climate from tropical influences and how precipitation is projected to change in the future from climate models and the consequences of this on local people and animals in the Arctic region such as from rain-on-snow events. Part of her work, as a research fellow in New Zealand was to assess the impact of tropical cyclones on the health infrastructure in the South Pacific Island Nations and territories which developed a new AI-model to equate the change on tropical cyclogenesis on landfall for hospital sites on Pacific Islands in the future.

Michelle also actively works in outreach and developed and continues to run a summer school in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada for high school students on climate change and oceanography.