Dr Callum Munday

Callum is an Associate Professor in climate science and physical geography, and a Tutorial Fellow of St John’s College, University of Oxford. His research focuses on African climate and climate change. He is particularly interested in the processes which lead to droughts and floods, and how these processes are altered by climate change.

Callum completed his DPhil at Oxford in 2019 as part of the NERC Environmental Research DTP. His project investigated the plausibility of climate model projections of southern African rainfall. As part of this research, he considered how we can make the most out of models to generate and test hypothesis about how regional climate systems function. The DPhil project contributed to the NERC-funded Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) UMFULA project. Following his DPhil, Callum was a postdoctoral scientist with the FCDO-funded REACH water security programme (2019-2021) and on the NERC-funded DRYCAB programme (2021-2024). He was also a visiting scientist at the UK Met Office (2020) and in the Oceanography Department in the University of Cape Town (2021-2022).

In the last few years, Callum has become interested in how we can combine insights from model experiment with new sources of observations to advance our understanding of regional climate. He collaborates with the UK Met Office to run model simulations  and has led several international field campaigns in data sparse regions of Africa. The data from the field campaigns provides an important reality check on model simulations.

Alongside his research, Callum has held various teaching positions since 2017, including at St Edmund Hall (Fellow by Special Election), and at Keble College (Stipendiary Lecturer).

Research Projects

• MASIKA (FCDO, 2024), PI
• KAPEX (RGS, John Fell Fund 2024), PI
• RIFTJet (FCDO, 2021), PI
• DRYCAB (NERC 2021-2025), Postdoctoral Scientist
• REACH - Improving Water Security for the Poor (FCDO, 2015-2024), Postdoctoral Scientist
• UMFULA: Uncertainty Reduction in Models for Understanding Development Applications (NERC, 2015-2021), DPhil Student

In the department, Callum lectures on climate systems and climate change across various course in the Geography programme, including in Climatology, Climate Change and Variability, Geographical Techniques and Earth System Dynamics, and supervises climate-related dissertations. At St John’s, he is responsible for teaching across the undergraduate physical geography course.

Callum co-supervises three DPhil students: