Research

Research Interests

Global climate change
Natural climate variability
Seasonal-to-decadal climate predictability
Climate change and mosquito-borne disease
Climate Intervention (Geoengineering)
Earth System Modeling
Weather-Climate Interface

Professor Hurrell’s personal research has centered on 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. He is especially interested in naturally occurring variations in climate on 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.

Professor Hurrell also conducts research on the potential impacts of various climate intervention techniques (sometimes called geoengineering) - deliberate, large-scale intervention in the climate system designed to counter global warming or offset some of its effects. Climate intervention could well be in our collective future, especially as the impacts of climate change become more severe and climate intervention technologies are within reach. To learn more, watch this series of videos created by our group and collaborators describing research on climate intervention for a general audience.