Eli Tziperman works in climate dynamics, trying to understand physical processes that affect Earth's climate on time scales of a few years to millions of years.

Climate variability results from a rich set of nonlinear, sometime chaotic, physical interactions of the oceans,atmosphere and at times the biosphere as well. Often the very basic questions are still unanswered in this field. E.g. why is El Nino irregular? Why are there ice ages? How far in advance can we predict the total precipitation of the next rainy season?

This clearly makes it a fascinating field to work in for students with a physics background who are interested in applying physical/ mathematical principles to the study of the natural world. Climate research also has, of course, an applied aspect directly affecting our life.

Accordingly, we work for example on improving El Nino prediction skill using advanced methods for combining realistic models and observations. See http://www.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli