Bio and Interests
Megan is a third year PhD student in the Climate Science program working with advisor Susan Solomon in the Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Department at MIT. She researches the processes, uncertainty, and impacts of modern day climate change. One of her focuses is on the global water cycle, where she characterizes changes in aridity in large ensembles of General Circulation Models and how these changes coincide with human populations. She has also studied the relationship between sea surface temperatures and changes in rainfall in southern Africa. She has collaborated with researchers looking at agricultural impacts and water infrastructure decisions under a changing climate.
Her second focus relates to the measurement and estimation of modern day sea level change. This work has involved the quantification of bias in altimetry measurements of sea level change, and improved ocean representation in sea level estimation. She is currently working on multiple data assimilation techniques to improve our understanding on the spatial variability of modern day sea level change.
Before starting her PhD she spent a year in the Democratic Republic of Congo teaching math courses at the Catholic University of Bukavu. She also consulted to the World Bank in Uganda, contributing to a climate change impacts report and strategy plan. In 2012, she completed her Master’s in the Technology and Policy Program at MIT, focusing on climate impacts on coastal infrastructure and spent the following year as a research associate at MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, studying climate impacts on river systems in the United States.
Working Papers
Lickley, M. & Solomon, S. (In review), On the relative influences of different ocean basin sea surface temperature anomalies in Southern African rainfall in 20th and 21st century GCM simulations
Lickley, M., Hay, C., Tamisiea, M., Mitrovica, J., (In review) Bias in estimates of global mean sea level change inferred from satellite altimetry data
Lickley, M., Solomon, S., (In review) Drivers, timing and impacts of global aridity change
Fletcher, S., Lickley, M., Strzepek, K., (In preparation) Flexible water infrastructure planning under climate change uncertainty in Mombasa, Kenya
Selected Publications
Dale, A., Fant, C., Strzepek, K., Lickley, M., & Solomon, S. (2017). Climate model uncertainty in impact assessments for agriculture: A multi‐ensemble case study on maize in sub‐Saharan Africa. Earth's Future, 5(3), 337-353.
Boehlert, B., Strzepek, K. M., Chapra, S. C., Fant, C., Gebretsadik, Y., Lickley, M., & Martinich, J. (2015). Climate change impacts and greenhouse gas mitigation effects on US water quality. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 7(3), 1326-1338.
Strzepek, K., Fant, C., Gebretsadik, Y., Lickley, M., Boehlert, B., Chapra, S., & Schlosser, C. A. (2015). Water body temperature model for assessing climate change impacts on thermal cooling. MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
Lickley, M. J., Lin, N., & Jacoby, H. D. (2014). Analysis of coastal protection under rising flood risk. Climate Risk Management, 6, 18-26.
Karsten, R., McMillan, J., Lickley, M., Haynes, R., (2008). Assessment of Tidal Current Energy in the Mina Passage, Bay of Fundy, Journal of Power and Energy
McMillan, J. M., Lickley, M. J., (2008). The potential of tidal power from the Bay of Fundy, SIAM Undergraduate Research Online, volume 1, issue 1