Staff Research

• Branstator, Grant

  Focus on problems in large scale atmospheric dynamics, and on the predictability of the coupled ocean-atmosphere system. Work to characterize the processes that organize midlatitude tropospheric variability on monthly and longer timescales - influence of land-sea contrasts, the synoptic eddies and tropical sea surface temperature anomalies. Prominent intrinsic modes of variability of the atmosphere; quasi-linear models, stochastic methods, the fluctuation dissipation theorem, and analog techniques.

• Deser, Clara

  Diagnostic analysis of observed and modelled global climate variability in the coupled atmosphere-ocean-ice-land system on diurnal to centennial time scales and future climate change; causes and consequences of Arctic sea ice loss, uncertainty in climate change projections, the El Niño - Southern Oscillation phenomenon, the North Atlantic Oscillation, and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

• Fasullo, John

  NCAR's Climate Data Guide, NCAR's Climate Variability Diagnostics Package; diagnostic studies of the observed global energy and water budgets under climate variability and change; assessments of simulations of these budgets by global coupled models (NCAR’s Large and Last Millennium Ensembles, CMIP3, CMIP5).

• Madden, Roland

  Empirical studies of Rossby-Haurwitz normal modes

• Phillips, Adam

  NCAR's Climate Variability Diagnostics Package, climate variability, the simulated climate of coupled models, and the regional effects of climate change.

• Schneider, David

  Diagnostic analyses of climate variability in the Antarctic; paleoclimate of the last millennium in the polar regions; evaluation of climate models.

• Shea, Dennis

  Hurricane climatology and structure, long-range predictability, atmospheric angular momentum, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, analyses of ocean data and, the 11-year Sunspot Cycle effects on the atmosphere.

• Simpson, Isla

  Large scale atmospheric dynamics and its representation in global climate models. Work to understand dynamical mechanisms involved in the variability and change of the large scale circulation and its impacts on regional climate and hydroclimate using a hierarchy of modelling approaches. Aim to determine the extent which models can successfully capture the processes of relevance for the real atmosphere and how they can be improved.

• Trenberth, Kevin

  All aspects of climate variability and climate change research; global energy and water cycles and how they are changing; empirical studies and quantitative diagnostic calculations.