Atmospheric wave dynamics and its surface impacts
Ocean variability reaches the continents through a stationary wave response. In the Atlantic sector, sea surface temperature anomalies in the subpolar North Atlantic paced the Eurasian winter cooling and its recent reversal. In the Pacific, I am asking how variability along the Kuroshio–Oyashio Extension reorganizes the storm track and reaches winter precipitation over California.
A mechanism is first diagnosed in observations, then isolated in nonlinear stationary wave and linear baroclinic models, where nonlinearity and transient eddy feedbacks can be selectively retained. Coupled large ensembles and CESM2 pacemaker experiments then determine whether it operates in a fully coupled system. The idealized models demonstrate that a pathway is dynamically viable; the comprehensive ones demonstrate that it is realized.
The coupling between the poles and lower latitudes runs both ways. I work on how far Arctic change reaches into mid-latitude weather, and on the stationary wave response that carries tropical and mid-latitude forcing back to the poles.