Integrating Models and Data-Driven Approaches for Improved Understanding of Climate Processes and Predictability

Aneesh Subramanian

University of Colorado Boulder

Tuesday, Dec 03, 2024, 2:00 pm MT
DSRC Room GC402

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Abstract

The Tropics play a crucial role in influencing global climates, with significant impacts on global circulation and tropical-to-extratropical teleconnections via tropical convection and planetary waves. For example, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, characterized by variations in sea surface temperatures and associated atmospheric and oceanic anomalies in the tropical Pacific Ocean, has global influences, especially on the interannual timescale. Similarly the monsoons over the Indian Oceans impacts a third of the world’s population living in the region as well as has remote teleconnections that influences the rest of the globe. Given its importance in shaping global climates, model biases in either mean states or variability over the Tropics can limit our predictability globally and across different timescales. To address these challenges, we examine current generation model biases in terms of both mean state and variability. Results from the Indian Ocean and over the tropical Pacific will be presented. Causal analyses to study remote teleconnections as well as information theory based metrics to study changes in tropical predictability with climate change will be presented. Finally, biases in key upper ocean features in the Tropical Pacific will be discussed, such as the eastern edge of the warm pool and barrier layer thickness. These will be addressed in the context of upcoming process studies being planned in the Tropics and the proposed science plan for these field campaigns will be presented.

Bio: Aneesh Subramanian is and Assistant Professor, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at University of Colorado, Boulder. He is also a visiting scholar in the Predictability of Weather and Climate group in the Physics Dept. at the University of Oxford. He graduated from the Climate Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego in 2012. He previously obtained M.Sc. (Engg.) from Indian Institute of Science in 2006 and B.Tech from IIT Madras in 2004.