Rate My Professor Jessica Baker

Dr Jessica Baker is Associate Professor of Forest-Climate Interactions at the University of Leeds. She holds a PhD in Ecology and Global Change from the University of Leeds, an MSc in Climate Change from University College London, and an MA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the feedbacks between tropical forests and the atmosphere, the impacts of deforestation and forest regrowth on climate, and long-term climate change. She currently leads the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project Climate Recovery and Adaptation potential of Forests in the Tropics (CRAFT), which assesses how forests can contribute to climate change adaptation by reducing heat extremes and sustaining inland water resources. Baker uses satellite and ground-based measurements to analyse land-atmosphere interactions and evaluates their representation in global climate models such as those in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects. She has strong links with the Met Office Climate Science for Service Partnership Brazil programme and is involved in the Met Office AmazonFACE research programme. Previously, she led the CSSP Brazil RADICAL project evaluating temperature and precipitation responses to Amazon deforestation in CMIP models, which resulted in publications in Nature and Environmental Research Letters. Prior to that, she was a postdoctoral researcher on the European Research Council DECAF project examining tropical forest-climate interactions and the CSSP Brazil LAPSE project evaluating land-atmosphere interactions in global climate models. Her PhD research reconstructed past changes in the Amazon water cycle using climate proxies from tree-ring cellulose.