Atlantic Niña is a natural climate pattern characterized by cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Atlantic Ocean. It’s considered the 'cold phase' of what oceanographers call the Atlantic Zonal Mode, similar to how La Niña is the cold phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the Pacific. Looking at the latest NOAA... Continue Reading →
Tropical cyclone (TC) activity results in substantial loss of life and property damage. While the Atlantic basin has experienced a pronounced increase in accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) and the number of TCs over the past 50 years, TC-resolving climate models project a slight decrease in TC frequency throughout the 21st century (e.g., Roberts et al.,... Continue Reading →
As the surface ocean warms and polar ice sheets melt due to increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, near-surface ocean stratification is increasing almost everywhere. In tropical and subtropical oceans, in particular, enhanced near-surface stratification inhibits the mixing between warmer surface water and cooler subsurface water, leading to a shallower surface mixed layer. In... Continue Reading →
During the satellite era (1979-present), the tropical Pacific Ocean has warmed significantly less than the other tropical oceans in response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs). This La Niña-like warming trend in observations is in disagreement with the El Niño-like warming trend projected by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) models for both the 20th and... Continue Reading →
According to the recharge-discharge oscillator theory (Jin, 1997), the leading mode of tropical Pacific upper ocean heat content anomalies is a predictor (or a precursor) for the onset of El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) at the interannual time scale. A new study published in Nature (Zhao et al., 2024) utilized multiple global sea surface... Continue Reading →
Currently (as of June 22, 2024), a phenomenon known as Atlantic Niña is brewing in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. As the Atlantic counterpart of La Niña in the Pacific, Atlantic Niña is characterized by the appearance of cold sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) in the eastern equatorial Atlantic. It is known to reduce rainfall and... Continue Reading →
On December 10, 2021, one of the most destructive winter tornado outbreaks developed in northeastern Arkansas. This tornado outbreak, later coined as the Quad-State Tornado Outbreaks by the news media, struck portions of the Ohio Valley, including Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, and Kentucky, from December 10 to 11, 2021. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric... Continue Reading →
Two important atmospheric jet streams that shape the extratropical zonal wind field in both hemispheres are the subtropical jet and the subpolar jet. The subtropical jet is located around 30° latitude line at the boundary between the Hadley cell and the Ferrel cell, and is predominantly a high-altitude feature. Since it is largely in thermal-wind... Continue Reading →
Atlantic Niño is the Atlantic counterpart of El Niño in the Pacific, often referred to as El Niño's little brother. It was previously thought to have only regional influence on rainfall variability in West Africa, but a growing number of studies have shown that Atlantic Niño also plays an important role in the development of... Continue Reading →
Atlantic Niño, characterized by warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the eastern equatorial Atlantic, is the Atlantic counterpart of the Pacific El Niño. Due to its smaller size in zonal extent, it is often referred to as El Niño’s little brother. It was previously thought to have a limited regional influence on rainfall variability... Continue Reading →
Ocean to Climate 