Dr Shammi Akhter is a climate scientist specialising in tropical cyclones, high-impact weather, and climate variability and predictability. Her current research is part of the joint NERC–NSF-funded HURACÁN project, where she investigates changes in the risk posed by cyclones of tropical origin to the UK and Western Europe, including tropical cyclones that transition into post-tropical cyclones and affect the region. Her work examines changes in cyclone development, intensity, tracks and landfall risk under natural climate variability and anthropogenic climate change.
A central component of her research is understanding the variability and predictability of North Atlantic tropical cyclone activity from interannual to decadal timescales and the large-scale dynamical and thermodynamic mechanisms that shape this variability and its implications for European cyclone risk. She uses statistical, detection-and-attribution, machine-learning and causal-network approaches to identify key drivers and develop physically informed storylines of severe near-term and future events.
She completed her PhD in Atmosphere, Oceans and Climate at the University of Reading, investigating the physical mechanisms governing North Indian Ocean tropical cyclone variability in the present climate and how tropical cyclone activity may change under future warming. She previously completed her undergraduate degree in Physics at the University of Dhaka.
Prior to joining Oxford, she worked as a Research Scientist at the University of Reading, investigating extreme sea-level variability across Southeast Asia. Her work identified extreme sea-level events, quantified their barotropic and non-barotropic components, and investigated their links to large-scale atmospheric drivers, particularly tropical cyclones and cold surges.
Her broader research interests centre on the dynamics, variability, predictability and changing risks of tropical cyclones and other high-impact weather and coastal extremes, with a particular interest in connecting tropical cyclone dynamics across ocean basins to their downstream impacts in a changing climate.