As a climate scientist, I have worked and interacted with many weather scientists in the past 20 years or so. I am also currently in a task force team to advance subseasonal (2~4 weeks) forecasts of severe weather activity in the U.S. I have learned so much from weather scientists about how longer-term climate processes... 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 →
Michael White is a climate science editor for Nature. He posted on Twitter a list of useful tips for climate scientists to consider before they submit their work to Nature or other journals. Personally, I would like to stress his suggestion to avoid subjective wording like “unprecedented”, “dramatic”, and “remarkable”. Such a subjective word gives... Continue Reading →
Throughout my career, I have published many scientific papers and reviewed even more papers. So, I have received or encountered many interesting reviews. Here are the 3 most memorable comments that I have received so far. #3) "The paper is very poorly written, lacks objective detail, and makes fatal flaw assumptions about the role of... Continue Reading →
As of July 2023, the developing El Niño in the Pacific has already exceeded its sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies of 1°C in Niño3.4 region (central Pacific) and 3°C in Niño1+2 region (far eastern Pacific). This is the first time to have those SST thresholds exceeded since the development of 1997-98 "supper El Niño" in... Continue Reading →
Online document-sharing service has revolutionized the way scientists share documents and interact with collaborators. Google Docs is probably the most widely used online document-sharing service. I use it almost every day for work and to share scientific paper drafts with coauthors. It is very convenient and facilitates collaboration between co-authors. For instance, a co-author can... Continue Reading →
Zhang, R., Sun, S., Chen, Z., Yang, H., & Wu, L. (2023). Rapid 21st century weakening of the Agulhas current in a warming climate. Geophys. Res. Lett., 50, e2022GL102070. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL102070: The Agulhas current is projected to slow down and become shallower during the rest of the 21st century, partly in response to the slowdown of... Continue Reading →
As a career scientist, I review scientific papers regularly, at least once every month. For instance, I reviewed a total of 18 papers in 2021, and many of them 2 ~ 3 times for revisions. I think I can speak for almost everyone that nobody really enjoys reviewing papers. We do it because it is... Continue Reading →
Craig Mclean is a former acting chief scientist and assistant administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) of NOAA. Craig recently retired from his 40-year career with NOAA. Among many of his lifetime achievements and contributions to NOAA, he initiated an investigation as to why NOAA's then-leadership backed Trump over its experts on Hurricane Dorian's... Continue Reading →
The editorial team of Nature's Communication Earth & Environment recommends a few achievable ways of making a science paper easier to follow: Scientific writing closely follows a formula that has proven successful. Simply answer a few questions in your paper, one after the other: why is your topic of interest? What has been done before?... Continue Reading →
Ocean to Climate 