Rate My Professor Nicolas Cullen

Professor Nicolas Cullen is a Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Otago. He holds an MSc from the University of Canterbury and a PhD from the University of Colorado. Appointed at the University of Otago in 2006, his research encompasses all aspects of meteorology and climatology, with a focus on the cryosphere. This includes interactions between the atmosphere and snow and ice surfaces in high and mid-latitudes and tropical high mountains such as Kilimanjaro. Cullen has led extensive field programs, including long-term meteorological observations on Brewster Glacier in New Zealand's Southern Alps since 2011, expeditions to Mount Kilimanjaro, and fieldwork on the Greenland ice sheet summit. His studies integrate field data, remote sensing, and modeling to examine glacier-climate interactions, mass balance processes, and climate change impacts on frozen water resources, seasonal snow, air pollution meteorology, and wind energy potential.

Cullen has supervised numerous postgraduate students, with over 25 completions on topics such as glacier mass balance, snow avalanches, atmospheric rivers, hydrometeorological modeling in Antarctica, and climate effects on ski fields. He has secured major grants from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment Endeavour Fund, Deep South National Science Challenge, Antarctic Science Platform, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Key publications include Kropač, E., Mölg, T., & Cullen, N. J. (2025) 'From sea to summit: Investigating the explicit role of SST increase for regional and high-altitude climates in New Zealand' in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres; Nielsen, E. B. et al. (2025) on Antarctic air temperature trends; and Hofsteenge, M. G. et al. (2025) on snowfall drivers in coastal Victoria Land. With more than 5,000 citations on Google Scholar, his work informs sea level rise projections and ecosystem responses in polar regions. He received an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship and delivered his Inaugural Professorial Lecture in 2023. Cullen teaches courses including GEOG 388 Climate Change: Present and Future and GEOG 460 Climatology.