The U.S. West Coast sustains diverse and highly productive marine ecosystems with crucial ecological and economic importance. Climate change is increasing stress on these systems through high-impact events—including marine heatwaves, hypoxia, and harmful algal blooms—highlighting the need to clarify their statistical behavior and physical drivers. We combine long-term in situ observations with regional and global model simulations to (i) characterize temperature- and oxygen-related extremes, (ii) diagnose how local physical processes interact with large-scale climate variability, and (iii) assess future risks to the California Current System.

The Asian monsoon is the largest monsoon system in the world, affecting more than half of the global population. Our research examines the dynamics of the monsoon and how its interactions with external forcings and internal climate variability together shape Asian hydroclimate patterns across timescales.

Research topics include:

• Spatiotemporal variability of monsoon rainfall 

• Evolution of the ENSO–monsoon relationship

• Co-occurrence of hydroclimate extremes

Large-scale atmospheric circulation systems such as the Hadley cell and jet streams, play a central role in transporting heat, moisture, and momentum, thereby shaping global weather and climate patterns. Our research investigates the physical mechanisms driving changes in these circulation systems across different climate backgrounds to better understand their sensitivity and responses to climate change. We also explore how large-scale circulation interacts with regional climate, providing insights into the drivers of environmental change, with the potential to reconstruct past circulation behaviors from environmental proxy records.