Climate Variability and Predictability

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. 

The indisputable evidence of global warming, and the knowledge that surface temperatures will continue to rise over the next several decades under any plausible emission scenario, is now a factor in the planning of many governments, businesses, and socio-economic sectors for which weather and climate sensitivity and vulnerability are high. On the timescale of a few years to a few decades ahead, however, regional and seasonal variations in weather patterns and climate, and their corresponding impacts, will be strongly influenced by natural variability. 

Decision makers in diverse arenas thus need to know the extent to which the weather and climate events they are seeing are the product of this natural variability, and hence can be expected to reverse at some point, or are the result of potentially irreversible, forced anthropogenic climate change.  It is a central challenge of climate science to predict such regional-scale climate variability and change over timescales from seasons to decades. 

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 is leading to a growing interest among researchers, governments, NGOs and policy analysts in understanding if the deployment of some form of Solar Climate Intervention (SCI) would help to 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 teh 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