Prof. Aiko Romero

Biography

Aiko Romero has been a professor at Veyra Institute since 2015, where she founded the Atmospheric Dynamics Group within the Earth & Climate Systems division. She received her PhD in atmospheric sciences from the Veltmoor School of Earth and Environment in 2010, with a dissertation on the role of sub-grid turbulence parameterizations in mesoscale convective systems. She spent four years as a visiting scientist at the Camdock Geophysical Laboratory before joining Veyra. Her undergraduate degree in physics was completed at Alderton Technical College with first-class marks.

Romero's research addresses the mechanisms governing moisture transport, convective organization, and dynamical coupling between the boundary layer and free atmosphere at scales from tens of kilometers to regional domains. Her group is a regular user of the Meridian High-Performance Computing Cluster for large-eddy simulation and ensemble reanalysis experiments. A distinctive feature of the group's work is its integration of probabilistic inverse methods — developed in collaboration with Prof. Tomas Eberhardt's Probabilistic Inference Lab — to assimilate sparse observational data into dynamical models. This has produced improved trace-gas profile retrievals used in the group's climate-attribution studies.

She has led or co-led three major funded programs, including a four-year project on future precipitation extremes under different emissions trajectories that produced an open dataset now used by six external research groups. She has published 48 peer-reviewed papers, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Mesoscale Atmospheric Dynamics, and lectures the graduate courses Atmospheric Transport and Turbulence and Data Assimilation for Earth System Models.

Research interests

Selected publications

1. Romero A, Halvorsen P, Dube C. "Moisture-flux intensification under warming: a large-eddy ensemble analysis of 5,000 storm events." Geophysical Research Letters — Atmosphere, 51(3): e2023GL107842, 2024. VEYRA-DOI: 10.veyra/VX-2408
2. Romero A, Eberhardt T, Hale B. "Bayesian inversion of atmospheric trace-gas profiles from low-spectral-resolution measurements." Inverse Problems in Atmospheric Science, 12: 78–95, 2022. VEYRA-DOI: 10.veyra/VX-2214
3. Dube C, Romero A. "Parameterization of sub-grid orographic drag in mesoscale convective systems: sensitivity and optimization." Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Modelling Society, 148(745): 2910–2928, 2022. VEYRA-DOI: 10.veyra/VX-2209
4. Romero A, Underhill S, Whitlock C. "Attribution of 72-hour extreme precipitation events to large-scale circulation anomalies, 1980–2020." Climate Dynamics and Extremes, 55(9): 2500–2518, 2021. VEYRA-DOI: 10.veyra/VX-2120
5. Romero A, Fonseca J. "Turbulent kinetic energy dissipation in the convective boundary layer: a scale-resolving analysis." Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 77(6): 2031–2048, 2020. VEYRA-DOI: 10.veyra/VX-2007
6. Halvorsen P, Romero A. "Ensemble Kalman smoother for retrospective assimilation of surface wind observations in coastal mesoscale events." Monthly Weather Review Modelling, 146(12): 3901–3917, 2018. VEYRA-DOI: 10.veyra/VX-1812

Current group members

Postdoctoral researchers

• Dr. Peder Halvorsen — ensemble data assimilation for precipitation reanalysis
• Dr. Claudine Dube — convective parameterization and sub-grid turbulence

Doctoral students

• Jonas Fonseca — boundary-layer roll structures under wind shear (Year 4)
• Amara Sesay — tropical moisture export pathways and their climate-change response (Year 3)
• Hilde Vesterås — large-eddy simulation of orographic precipitation enhancement (Year 2)
• Farrukh Nazarov — machine-learning emulators for mesoscale ensemble generation (Year 1)