Climate Variability and Predictability

NOTICE TO PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS

Thank you for your interest in my research group. I am not accepting new M.S. or Ph.D. students at this time.

Research and Activities

The research foci of the Hurrell group at CSU include empirical and modeling studies and diagnostic analyses to better understand climate, climate variability and climate change, with an emphasis on the mechanisms, predictability and impacts of leading patterns of climate variability. We are especially interested in naturally occurring variations in climate from seasonal to decadal timescales, and the predictability of those variations.

Our research increasingly examines how natural climate variability interacts with long-term anthropogenic climate change to shape regional climate, extreme weather, and impacts on human and natural systems. This includes work on the changing characteristics of extreme events and the extent to which human-caused climate change has influenced their likelihood or intensity. We are also investigating how environments favorable for severe convective weather may change in a warmer climate, and how large-scale patterns of ocean and atmospheric variability can influence severe weather risk over the United States.

An important and growing part of our research focuses on the interactions between climate and coupled human and natural systems. Working with collaborators across disciplines, we examine how climate variability and change affect ecosystems, human health, and other climate-sensitive systems. This includes research on how climate influences the environmental conditions that affect vector-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria, as well as broader questions about how interactions among climate, ecosystems, and human activities shape environmental and societal outcomes.

Underlying much of this work is an interest in separating and understanding the roles of natural variability and externally forced climate change. On timescales from seasons to decades, regional climate and its impacts reflect both influences, sometimes reinforcing and sometimes opposing one another. Understanding these interactions is important not only for interpreting observed changes, but also for improving predictions and projections of climate and its impacts at the regional scales most relevant to society.

It is therefore a central challenge of climate science to understand and predict regional climate variability and change, including changes in extremes and their impacts, over timescales from seasons to decades. Our group approaches this challenge using observations, climate model simulations, large ensembles, and targeted numerical experiments to identify physical mechanisms, quantify uncertainty, and better understand the sources and limits of predictability.

Moreover, the world is not presently addressing climate change through policy and mitigation in a way that will avert profound consequences. The potential severe consequences of future climate change and relatively weak climate action to date are leading to growing interest among researchers, governments, NGOs, and policy analysts in understanding whether deployment of some form of Solar Climate Intervention (SCI) could help reduce some adverse climate change impacts while humanity works to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. SCI refers to a set of proposed large-scale interventions aimed at reflecting sunlight back into space to cool Earth. While it is generally accepted that SCI is the only way to quickly reduce global climate warming, proposed SCI strategies involve significant, uncertain risks that must be understood. The Hurrell group uses model simulations to assess the potential benefits and risks of SCI, relative to the risks posed by climate change. To learn more, watch this series of videos created by our group and collaborators describing research on climate intervention for a general audience.   

Summer 2024

Spring 2025