Why weather and climate dynamics research?

Atmosphere–ocean interactions
Oceans play a key role in regulating the earth's climate. This is partly because of inertia; oceans take longer to heat and cool than land. But scientists at CIRES are also interested in studying how sea surface temperature changes affect weather phenomena and longer-term climate variability. In one area of research, CIRES scientists look at how variations in the temperature anomaly and location of El Niño events impact precipitation in different parts of the world.

Tropical convection
Atmospheric convection in the tropical regions is one of the main mechanisms of transporting solar energy from the equator to the polar regions of our planet. This pattern of warm air rising, cool air sinking is responsible for both the daily rainstorms typical of equatorial regions and heat transport away from the equator toward higher latitudes. CIRES researchers look at whether improving our understanding of tropical convection will shed light on weather-climate connections. They also continually work to improve models that explain poleward transport of heat.

Connecting climate and weather
Traditionally, the atmospheric sciences have treated weather and climate separately. At CIRES, we're moving toward a more unified study of these processes. We want to know how climate variations influence weather events and how weather patterns affect climate. We've already observed that weather events can shift the path of the jet stream and that changes in sea-surface temperatures influence hurricane intensity. By further studying these connections across time scales, our researchers hope to improve long-term weather-climate forecasting abilities, especially for extreme events like droughts, floods, wildfires, and hurricanes.

El Niño
For years, scientists have tracked the intensity of the El Niño Southern Oscillation by measuring the strength of the sea surface temperature anomaly. El Niños occur when warmer ocean water wells up toward the eastern equatorial Pacific. But the strength of the temperature anomaly may not be the only important factor in predicting El Niño-related weather events. Our researchers found that the location of sea-surface warming appears to be just as critical. For instance, El Niños that develop near the central equatorial Pacific appear to cause drought during the Indian Monsoon, whereas warm waters near the eastern equatorial Pacific may have no impact on monsoon rains.

Research Snapshot
Water Resource Management