I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Physics at the University of Aberdeen.

My research focuses on the atmospheres of other planets in the Solar System, in particular Mars and Jupiter. I am interested in data assimilation, rotating tank laboratory experiments, extrasolar planets, and chaos in the context of weather and other geophysical fluid dynamics.

Between 2019 and 2023 I was an Assistant (later Associate) Professor in the Department of Physics at United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. I led the Planetary Science research group at the National Space Science and Technology Center. My archived page for this group can be found here.

Between 2017 and 2019 I was a CNRS Research Scientist in the Equipe Planéto at the Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique at Sorbonne Université in Paris (formerly Université Pierre et Marie Curie, or Paris-VI, Jussieu campus). My work was funded by CNES and Thales Alenia Space.

Between 2009 and 2017 I was a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Geophysical and Planetary Fluid Dynamics group in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, part of the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. My work was funded by ESA, STFC, and NERC.

  • Modelling Jupiter's global jet structure and cloud dynamics

    In Young et al., 2018a and Young et al., 2018b we used the MITgcm to study a mechanism for the spin-up of Jupiter's super-rotating equatorial zonal jet, and its ammonia and water cycles.

  • Kinetic energy spectral fluxes in Jupiter's atmosphere

    Jupiter's atmosphere contains an upscale and a downscale kinetic energy cascade, with the cascade direction reversing around the deformation scale, implying an important role for baroclinic processes (Young & Read, 2017).

  • Zonal jet formation on a topographic beta-plane

    A snapshot from an experiment at the 13m diameter Coriolis rotating tank facility in Grenoble, studying zonal jet formation on a topographic beta-plane (Read et al., 2015).

  • Relative vorticity around Jupiter's Great Red Spot

    In Galperin et al. (2014) we used cloud tracking to produce global maps of wind in Jupiter's weather layer and used it to study turbulent phenomena.

  • The rotating annulus 'baroclinic sandwich' configuration

    Axisymmetric simulation of a rotating annulus with heating at the lower outer boundary and cooling at the upper inner boundary. This drives free convection near the radial boundaries, with baroclinic instability in the interior at higher rotation (Wright et al., 2017).

  • Lorenz energy budgets for Earth and Mars

    The Mars energy budget was computed using a reanalysis derived from Mars Global Surveyor data for Mars Year 24-27, reported in Tabataba-Vakili et al. (2015).

  • Inertia-gravity waves in the rotating annulus

    A sequence of horizontal sections 12s apart showing horizontal divergence in a simulation of the rotating annulus with inertia-gravity waves near the inner cyclinder (Jacoby et al., 2011)

  • Forecasting chaotic flow in the rotating annulus

    Combining techniques used in numerical weather prediction for ensemble generation and data assimilation, in Young & Read (2008, 2016) we studied the predictability of the rotating annulus experiment in regular and chaotic flow regimes.

  • Simulated rotating annulus regime diagram

    Part of a regime diagram for the thermally-driven rotating annulus generated by the MORALS simulation by Young & Read (2008). A series of period-doubling bifurcations resembling those of the logistic map was found in part of the parameter space.

  • Lorenz energy cycle in rotating annulus flow

    The cycle of potential and kinetic energy at the strong-eddy extreme of the thermally-driven rotating annulus amplitude vacillation cycle, simulated using MORALS by Young (2014).

  • Vortex shedding in the annulus found with data assimilation

    By assimilating velocity measurements into the MORALS simulation of the thermally-driven rotating annulus, Young & Read (2013) studied vortex shedding using variables that were not observed but were instead derived by the assimilation.