Profile pic

I'm a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University and NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. Prior to this, I got my PhD in climate science from the University of Oxford.

I study the physics of clouds, radiation and circulation, with a focus on how these processes shape Earth's climate and its response to forcing. This is a broad endeavor, and so my work touches on a number of topics, for example: tropical dynamics, radiative feedbacks, the hydrological cycle and aerosol-climate interactions.

I am actively involved in climate science outreach through Climate Up Close.

Please don't hesitate to reach out if you would like to chat or collaborate! My email is: andrew.williams@princeton.edu


News

May 2025   Together with a number of other students, postdocs and faculty, I organized the 100 hour-long Weather & Climate Livestream! Huge thanks to the 200+ speakers who volunteered their time to draw attention to the importance of US weather & climate science. It was covered nicely in this Nwew York Times article.  

April 2025   I gave talks at Florida State University, EGU, and the ECS & Cloud Feedback Virtual Symposium.  

April 2025   My paper "A Robust Constraint on the Response of Convective Mass Fluxes to Warming ", co-authored with Nadir Jeevanjee, was just published in Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. Yay!  

April 2025   The paper "Surface temperature effects of recent reductions in shipping SO2 emissions are within internal variability", led by Duncan Watson-Parris, was published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.  

April 2025   The paper "Circulation and Cloud Responses to Patterned SST Warming", led by Anna Mackie, was published in Geophysical Research Letters.  

February 2025   I visited the University of Washington to give an invited talk. I met with a number of wonderful faculty and students—thanks for having me!  

September 2024   I gave invited talks on convection and the response of tropical circulations to warming at The City College of New York and the CLIVAR TROPICS workshop in Hamburg.  

August 2024   Our paper on the effect of vertical grid spacing on the climate of a global storm-resolving model was published in Geoscientific Model Development.  

August 2024   I spent a week in New Hampshire doing climate science outreach with Climate Up Close. It was fantastic to connect with local New Hampshire residents and to help them grapple with the science and implications of climate change. For a glimpse into one of our events, take a look at this excellent NHPR article.  

June 2024   I presented my work on the response of convective mass fluxes to warming at the CFMIP conference (which I helped to organize) and at AOFD in Burlington.  

Feb 2024   Excited to share that the GFMIP protocol paper is now published in JAMES! This has been a long and herculean effort, spearheared by the brilliant Jonah Bloch-Johnson and backed up by a number of exceptional scientists from around the world. Looking forward to seeing this initiative bear fruit, so read the paper here and considering submitting simulations with your model!  

Nov 2023   Together with Veeshan Narinesingh and Xia Li, we gave guest lectures at the CUNY Graduate Center on atmospheric dynamics and heatwaves in a changing climate. It was great to interact with so many bright and eager PhD students!  

Oct 2023   It was a busy week, as I gave departmental seminars at NYU's Courant Institute (in person) and the University of East Anglia (virtual); I spoke about the role of deep convection in governing the pattern effect and the tropical lapse rate. Many thanks to the organizers for inviting me!  

Sept 2023   I joined the Steering Committee for the ECS & cloud feedback virtual symposia. I've learned so much from these sessions and am psyched to help organize future events.  

July 2023   I won an outstanding early career presentation award at the CFMIP-GASS meeting in Paris! Thanks to Sandrine/Florent and all the local organizers for a fantastic conference!  

July 2023   I defended my PhD thesis! Thanks to Tim Woollings and Bjorn Samset for taking the time to discuss and provide stimulating feedback on my work.  

March 2023   I gave a talk at the 23rd ECS & cloud feedbacks virtual symposium, alongside great talks by Margaret Duffy and Paulo Ceppi! Thanks to the organizers for putting together these sessions. :)  

March 2023   My "circus tent" paper was chosen as an Editor's highlight!  

March 2023   My paper on "Circus Tents, Convective Thresholds, and the Non-Linear Climate Response to Tropical SSTs", co-authored with Nadir Jeevanjee and Jonah Bloch-Johnson, was just published in Geophysical Research Letters!  

Dec. 2022   I took the train from New York to Chicago for #AGU22! It was a rewarding week, with lots of great posters and talks around. I gave a talk on Friday afternoon on my "circus tent" paper too!  

Dec. 2022   I spent two weeks on the East Coast visiting different institutions pre-AGU, thanks to my hosts at Yale, Boston College, Harvard and GFDL for the great experience!  

Aug. 2022   I was interviewed for Oxford's "Meet the Scientist" series! Enjoy reading me rant about climate, cycling and my cat :)  

July 2022   My paper on aerosol effective radiative forcing was just published in Nature Climate Change! Read a summary/explainer here :)  

July 2022   I won an Outstanding Student Presentation award for my EGU conference presentation! :sunglasses:  

May 2022   I attended the EGU22 conference (in-person!) and gave an invited talk on my PhD work. :)  

Apr. 2022   Our new paper was just published in JAMES! In it, we introduce a simple framework which links clouds and circulation by thinking about how they relate to the atmospheric water and energy budgets.  

Feb. 2022   I received an Outstanding Student Presentation award for my AGU conference presentation! :)  

Dec. 2021   I attended my first AGU conference (virtually...)! While "there", I presented one poster on my PhD work, and gave a talk on my extreme precipitation paper with Paul O'Gorman (now published in GRL).  

Dec. 2021   I contributed to a new paper in GMD, led by the inimitable Duncan Watson-Parris. In it, we introduce a scalable, open-source framework for performing emulation and calibration of complex climate datasets - 'ESEm'!  

Oct. 2019   I started my PhD! =D