About
56
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Introduction
Hi! I’m a ocean-atmosphere scientist currently working at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory.
My research is aimed at understanding climate variability and extremes using observations and model simulations.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
January 2020 - present
Education
September 2014 - September 2019
September 2014 - June 2015
August 2010 - May 2014
Publications
Publications (56)
Summer 2019 observations show a rapid resurgence of the Blob-like warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies that produced devastating marine impacts in the Northeast Pacific during winter 2013/2014. Unlike the original Blob, Blob 2.0 peaked in the summer, a season when little is known about the physical drivers of such events. We show that Blob...
Recently, there has been substantial effort to understand the fundamental characteristics of warm ocean temperature extremes—known as marine heat- waves (MHWs). However, MHW research has primarily focused on the surface signature of these events. While surface MHWs (SMHW) can have dramatic impacts on marine ecosystems, extreme warming along the sea...
Ocean scientists are striving to better understand marine heatwaves, especially whether climate change is making them more frequent or intense. But right now the term ‘marine heatwave’ is used by scientists and the media to refer to two different things: extreme conditions compared to historical temperatures, and extreme conditions compared to an e...
Plain Language Summary
Upwelling—the process of drawing cold, nutrient rich ocean waters toward the surface—plays a vital role in supporting vibrant and diverse biological populations throughout the California Current System (CCS). Here, we assess whether four global climate models can forecast seasonal upwelling 1–12 months in advance. We show tha...
Recent studies have shown that potential predictability and actual forecast skill have varied throughout the historical record, primarily due to natural decadal variability. In this study, we explore whether and how potential predictability are projected to change in the future as a distinct response to anthropogenic climate change. We estimate the...
We introduce an interpretable-by-design method, optimized model-analog, that integrates deep learning with model-analog forecasting which generates forecasts from similar initial climate states in a repository of model simulations. This hybrid framework employs a convolutional neural network to estimate state-dependent weights to identify initial a...
Temperature strongly influences marine organisms through their metabolism, growth and behavior, including species that live on or near the bottom, such as shellfish, crabs, and flounder. Although there have been many studies documenting sea surface temperature variability, much less is known about bottom water temperatures due to a lack of observat...
Marine heatwaves (MHWs), prolonged periods of unusually high ocean temperatures, significantly impact global ecosystems. However, there is ongoing debate regarding the definition of these extreme events, which is crucial for effective research and communication among marine scientists, decision-makers, and the broader public. Fundamental to all MHW...
Marine heatwaves have profoundly impacted marine ecosystems over large areas of the world oceans, calling for improved understanding of their dynamics and predictability. Here, we critically review the recent substantial advances in this active area of research, including the exploration of the three-dimensional structure and evolution of these ext...
Forecasts of sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTAs) provide essential information to stakeholders of marine resources in coastal ecosystems, such as the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME), at management-relevant monthly-to-annual time scales. Diagnosing dynamical sources of predictability and the mechanisms differentiating skill a...
To improve understanding of ocean processes impacting monthly sea surface temperature (SST) variability, we analyze a Community Earth System Model version 2 hierarchy in which models vary only in their degree of ocean complexity. The most realistic ocean is a dynamical ocean model, as part of a fully coupled model (FCM). The next most realistic oce...
Plain Language Summary
The California Current System is one of the world's eastern boundary upwelling systems—some of the most productive regions in the global ocean. These regions support a wide range of human activities, such as fisheries and tourism, motivating extensive research on how they might evolve under future climate change. A number of...
The future evolution of sea surface temperature (SST) extremes is of great concern, not only for the health of marine ecosystems and sustainability of commercial fisheries, but also for precipitation extremes fueled by moisture evaporated from the ocean. This study examines the projected influence of anthropogenic climate change on the intensity an...
Ocean forecasting is now widely recognized as an important approach to improve the resilience of marine ecosystems, coastal communities, and economies to climate variability and change. In particular, regionally tailored forecasts may serve as the foundation for a wide range of applications to facilitate proactive decision making. Here, we describe...
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation has been suggested to play an important role in driving marine heatwaves in the Northeast Pacific during recent decades. Here we combine observations and climate model simulations to show that marine heatwaves became longer, stronger and more frequent off the Northeast Pacific coast under a positive Pacific Decadal O...
The Pacific meridional modes (PMMs) are the leading ocean–atmosphere coupled modes in the subtropical northeastern (NPMM) and southeastern (SPMM) Pacific, respectively, and have been suggested to be key precursors to equatorial Pacific variability. Previous studies pointed out that both NPMM- and SPMM-related sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies...
Sparse and inconsistent coverage of ocean observations makes analysis of climate impacts on ocean physics and marine ecosystems challenging. As a result, ocean reanalyses (i.e., ocean models constrained by observations through data assimilation) were developed to provide historical ocean state estimates that are spatially and temporally uniform. Re...
The modes of Pacific decadal-scale variability (PDV), traditionally defined as statistical patterns of variance, reflect to first order the ocean's integration (i.e., reddening) of atmospheric forcing that arises from both a shift and a change in strength of the climatological (time-mean) atmospheric circulation. While these patterns concisely desc...
The tropical Pacific exhibits decadal El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-like variability, characterized by meridionally broad sea surface temperature anomalies in the eastern Pacific. In this study, we focus on the variability in the equatorial Pacific band (5°S–5°N), termed equatorial Pacific decadal variability (EPDV). While it is known that oc...
Ocean memory, the persistence of ocean conditions, is a major source of predictability in the climate system beyond weather time scales. We show that ocean memory, as measured by the year-to-year persistence of sea surface temperature anomalies, is projected to steadily decline in the coming decades over much of the globe. This global decline in oc...
Ocean memory, the persistence of ocean conditions, is a major source of predictability in the climate system beyond weather time scales. We show that ocean memory, as measured by the year-to-year persistence of sea surface temperature anomalies, is projected to steadily decline in the coming decades over much of the globe. This global decline in oc...
Marine heatwaves (MHWs)—periods of exceptionally warm ocean temperature lasting weeks to years—are now widely recognized for their capacity to disrupt marine ecosystems1–3. The substantial ecological and socioeconomic impacts of these extreme events present significant challenges to marine resource managers4–7, who would benefit from forewarning of...
Plain Language Summary
The Pacific Meridional Mode (PMM) is a prominent pattern of climate variability situated in the subtropical northeastern Pacific. Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies associated with the PMM can propagate into the deep tropics via a feedback process involving the coupling between wind, evaporation, and SST. In the tropics,...
Accurate dynamical forecasts of ocean variables in the California Current System (CCS) are essential decision support tools for advancing ecosystem‐based marine resource management. However, model and dynamical uncertainties present a significant challenge when attempting to incorporate these forecasts into a formal decision‐making process. To prov...
The Western U.S. is vulnerable to hydrological stress, and insights from past climate periods are helpful for providing historical benchmarks for future climate projections. Myriad evidence from coupled models and paleoclimatic proxies suggests a major reorganization of west coast hydroclimate during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ∼17–25 ka), such...
Equatorial Pacific decadal variability (EPDV) modulates global climate. Although EPDV is suggested to be generated by both air-sea thermodynamically coupled slab ocean models (SOM) and fully coupled dynamic ocean models (DOM), the reason of EPDV simulated by the two distinct hierarchies of models remains unclear. This ambiguity arises from a gap in...
This chapter details 2020 global patterns in select observed oceanic physical, chemical, and biological variables relative to long-term climatologies, their differences between 2020 and 2019, and puts 2020 observations in the context of the historical record.
The subtropical northeastern Pacific (SNEP) acts as a bridge conveying information between the North and tropical Pacific. While most studies have investigated the SNEP sea surface temperature (SST) interannual variability, less attention has been paid to the pronounced decadal variability in this region. Here, by analyzing observational data and a...
Investigating Pacific Meridional Modes (PMM) without the influence of tropical Pacific variability is technically difficult if based on observations or fully coupled model simulations due to their overlapping spatial structures. To confront this issue, the present study investigates both North (NPMM) and South PMM (SPMM) in terms of their associate...
The 2019 Northwest Pacific marine heatwave was amplified by natural, multi-decadal shoaling of the ocean mixed layer; anthropogenic mixed layer shoaling will amplify marine heatwaves in the future.
Sea surface temperature (SST) observations in the North Atlantic since 1870 reveal a region of enhanced warming off the northeastern coast of North America, and a region of cooling to the south of Greenland. It has been hypothesized that these adjacent SST trends are a result of long‐term changes in the buoyancy‐driven ocean circulation—a slowdown...
Upwelling in eastern boundary current regions is crucial to bringing nutrient-rich water to the photic zone and supporting the associated ecosystems. This upwelling is a result of the wind-driven ocean circulation and is therefore susceptible to changes in the atmospheric circulation. We use the Community Earth System Model and observational data t...
Widespread public and scientific interest in the recent global warming hiatus and related multidecadal climate variability stimulated a surge in our understanding of key metrics of global climate change. While seeking explanations for the nearly steady global mean temperature from late 1990s through the early 2010s, the scientific community also gr...
Summer 2019 observations show a rapid resurgence of the "Blob"-like warm sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies that produced devastating marine impacts in the Northeast Pacific during winter 2013/2014. Unlike the original Blob, Blob 2.0 occurred in the summer, a season when relatively little is known about the physical drivers of such events. We...
Purpose of Review
This paper reviews recent progress in understanding of the North Pacific Meridional Mode (NPMM) and its influence on the timing, magnitude, flavor, and intensity of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
Recent Findings
The NPMM is a seasonally evolving mode of coupled climate variability and features several distinct opportuni...
The Pacific Meridional Mode, a coupled ocean–atmospheric interaction responsible for propagating subtropical anomalies to the tropics via thermodynamic mechanisms, features prominently in discussions of the response of climate variability to climate change. However, it is presently unclear how and why the variance in PMM might change, or even if gr...
Studies have indicated that North Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) variability can significantly modulate the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), but there has been little effort to put extratropical-tropical interactions into the context of historical events. To quantify the role of the North Pacific in pacing the timing and magnitude of obs...
![Joint EOF of ψ500ψ500 (kg m− 1 s− 1), [ZT] (km), and [P − E] (mm...](profile/Dillon-Amaya/publication/319940313/figure/fig1/AS:540705195913216@1505925572950/Joint-EOF-of-ps500ps500-kg-m-1-s-1-ZT-km-and-P-E-mm-day-1-in-the-1000-year_Q320.jpg)
The poleward branches of the Hadley Cells and the edge of the tropics show a robust poleward shift during the satellite era, leading to concerns over the possible encroachment of the globe’s subtropical dry zones into currently temperate climates. The extent to which this trend is caused by anthropogenic forcing versus internal variability remains...
Understanding the primary drivers of tropical widening has been a major focus of recent literature, with studies showing the importance of anthropogenic factors, including greenhouse gases (Lu et al. 2007, 2009; Tao et al. 2016), stratospheric ozone depletion (Son et al. 2009; Polvani et al. 2011; Waugh et al. 2015), and anthropogenic aerosols (All...
The Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM) is the dominant mode of tropical SST/wind coupled variability. Modeling studies have implicated wind-evaporation-SST (WES) feedback as the primary driver of the AMM’s evolution across the Atlantic basin; however, a robust coupling of the SST and winds has not been shown in observations. This study examines observe...
Year-to-year variations in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) indices generate significant interest throughout the general public and the scientific community due to the sometimes destructive nature of this climate mode. For example, so-called “Godzilla” ENSOs can generate billions of dollars in damages from the US agricultural industry alone...
Equatorial Pacific changes during the transition from a non-hiatus period (pre-1999) to the present global warming hiatus period (post-1999) are identified using a combination of reanalysis and observed data sets. Results show increased surface wind forcing has excited significant changes in wind-driven circulation. Over the last two decades, the c...
impacts of canonical and Modoki El Niño on tropical Atlantic sea surface temperature (SST) are quantified using composite analysis. Results show that El Niño Modoki fails to produce significant warming in the tropical Atlantic, in contrast to the well known warming following canonical El Niño events. El Niño Modoki instead induces significant cooli...
Fifty years ago, Hans A. Panofsky published a paper entitled Determination of stress from wind and temperature meas-urements. In his famous paper, he presented a new profile function for the mean horizontal wind speed under the condi-tion of diabatic stratification that includes his integral similarity function. With his integral similarity functio...
he accumulation of dust in remote, pelagic sediments is controlled by aridity in the source regions as well as the gustiness of the transporting winds. Models and theory predict lower zonal wind intensities and gustiness in climates characterized by diminished meridional gradients such as the Late Cretaceous and Early Paleogene. The few published l...
