Under the high emission scenario for the future (RCP 8.5), a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean (i.e., sea-ice extent less than 10-6 km2 for at least five consecutive years) in northern summer is likely before 2050. A decrease in Antarctic sea-ice extent is also expected during the 21st century, but at a slower rate with large uncertainty.... Continue Reading →
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center (NOAA SPC) provides one- to eight-day severe weather forecast for the U.S. that includes tornado watch. To extend the current severe weather forecast beyond eight days to 2 - 4 weeks (i.e., subseasonal time scale), many studies have looked into the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), a patch... Continue Reading →
A phenomenon known as Atlantic Niño is characterized by the appearance of warm sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) in the eastern equatorial Atlantic in northern summer. When it attains its full strength, it increases rainfall and the frequency of extreme flooding over the West African countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea and in northeastern South... Continue Reading →
During the past century, the tropical Pacific Ocean has warmed significantly less than the other tropical oceans in response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs). This La Nina-like warming trend in the observations is in stark contrast to the El Nino-like warming trend projected by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) models for both the 20th... Continue Reading →
Atmospheric blocking over the high-latitude North Atlantic blocks the westerly jet stream, causing the eastward propagation of weather systems to stall for 7 days or so. An earlier study by Häkkinen et al. (2011) used the 20th century atmospheric reanalysis product of NOAA (20CR) to show that the wintertime blocking frequency over high latitude North Atlantic covaries... Continue Reading →
Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) is the main mode of intraseasonal atmospheric variability in the tropical Indo-Pacific Oceans and the major source of subseasonal predictability of precipitation and extreme weather events in many parts of the globe. Although MJO is known as an eastward propagating equatorial atmospheric kelvin wave, not all MJO events are identical in terms of their strength... Continue Reading →
Heat waves are the leading weather‐related cause of death in the U.S. For example, the most recent U.S. extreme heat waves that occurred over the Great Plains in 2011 and 2012 caused 362 deaths. These events are unusual and largely unpredictable beyond the synoptic time scale. However, their number and severity have increased and are projected... Continue Reading →
The Amazonian River basin hosts the one of the major global deep tropical convective systems, and thus drives the global Hadley and Walker circulations and the global hydrological cycle. Changes in the water cycle and deep convection activity in this region are, however, largely affected by remote oceans, especially the tropical Pacific, via the Walker circulation.... Continue Reading →
It is a well-known phenomenon that the Tropical North Atlantic (TNA) warms in boreal spring and early summer (April – June) following El Nino peaks in boreal winter (Enfield and Mayer, 1997). This involves formation of the so-called extratropical atmospheric stationary Rossby wave trains from the tropical Pacific (e.g., Lee et al., 2008). A new paper published... Continue Reading →
The North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) is a dipole oscillation of the sea level pressure (or the atmospheric mass) between the subpolar low and subtropical high over the North Pacific Ocean. A study published in Nature Climate Change showed that the center of the NPO shifted eastward during the recent decades (1995-2014), and thus increased the frequency of... Continue Reading →
Ocean to Climate 