Dr Ellen Dyer

Postdoctoral Researcher in African Climate Science

Academic Profile

Ellen is a climate scientist in the who specialises in African climate systems and joined SoGE at the University of Oxford in 2016. Her current work focuses on understanding historical climate and future projections in models for Ethiopia and Kenya as part of the REACH project. She is also interested in how climate information is communicated and disseminated and is leading a study on climate information flows in the Awash Basin, Ethiopia. Ellen has also been a research associate on the LaunchPAD project (https://launchpad6.home.blog) to build a set of model evaluation diagnostics for Africa. With LaunchPAD, she has been a mentor and collaborator for early career research fellows at four African universities creating diagnostic metrics for global climate models. Previously, her work has used modelling experiments to examine the influence of the Indian Ocean on rainfall in the Sahel, and rainfall moisture sources and water isotopes in vapour in the Congo Basin.

Ellen's interests include understanding challenges in using climate information in Africa - from difficulties in capturing physical processes in models to the confidence users have in information at a local scale and everything in between. Ellen completed her PhD in Atmospheric Physics from the University of Toronto in 2016. She has a background in Physics and African Studies.

Teaching and Supervision

Current Graduate Research Students

Pan Ei Ei PhyoeClimate Services Transformed: Bridging Climate Science and Practice to Support Water Resources Management under Future Uncertainty

Selected Publications

For the full list of Ellen's publications, please see her ORCiD profile.

Dyer, E., Hirons, L. and Taye, M. (2022) Climate Dynamics, 59(11-12), pp. 3621–3641.
1251324 - July-September rainfall in the Greater Horn of Afr...
Grasham, C. et al. (2021) npj Clean Water, 4(1).
1189707 - Engaging with the politics of climate resilience t...
Dyer, E. and Chudleigh, T. (2021) Ultrasound (Leeds, England), 29(2), pp. 83–91.
2092979 - Peer review of third trimester abdominal circumfer...
Dyer, E. and Washington, R. (2021) Journal of Climate, 34(9), pp. 3311–3326.
1179979 - Kenyan long rains: a subseasonal approach to proce...
Bussi, G. et al. (2021) Sustainability, 13(3).
1159104 - Impacts of climate change and population growth on...
Taye, M. et al. (2020) Science of The Total Environment, 755(Pt 1).
1139826 - Potential predictability of the Ethiopian summer r...
Mahony, J., Dyer, E. and Washington, R. (2020) International Journal of Climatology, 41(S1), pp. E2051 - E2072.
1137135 - The precipitation patterns and atmospheric dynamic...
Peng, J. et al. (2020) Earth System Science Data, 12(2020), pp. 753–769.
1097849 - A pan-African high-resolution drought index datase...
Dyer, E., Washington, R. and Taye, M. (2019) International Journal of Climatology, 40(6), pp. 2964–2985.
1079938 - Evaluating the CMIP5 ensemble in Ethiopia: creatin...
Hirpa, F. et al. (2019) Climatic Change, 156(3-4), pp. 341–363.
1063525 - Streamflow response to climate change in the Great...