{"id":1696,"date":"2022-08-30T00:24:04","date_gmt":"2022-08-30T00:24:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/?p=1696"},"modified":"2023-01-03T20:34:03","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T20:34:03","slug":"applying-a-diverse-lens-to-the-atmospheric-phenomena-affecting-el-nino-and-la-nina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/applying-a-diverse-lens-to-the-atmospheric-phenomena-affecting-el-nino-and-la-nina\/","title":{"rendered":"Applying a Diverse Lens to the Atmospheric Phenomena Affecting El Ni\u00f1o and La Ni\u00f1a"},"content":{"rendered":"

For forty years, climate scientists have been trying to develop a computational model that accurately predicts the El Ni\u00f1o\u2013Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon<\/span><\/a>. But that work has stagnated in recent years with only minor, gradual improvements to their predictions.<\/p>\n

\"Ben\u201cThe question is why? What are we not understanding?\u201d said Ben Kirtman<\/strong>, the Deputy Director of the University of Miami\u2019s Institute for Data Science and Computing (IDSC), head of the IDSC Earth Systems<\/span><\/a> program, and Director of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science’s<\/a>\u00a0Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Sciences<\/a><\/span> (CIMAS).<\/p>\n

Kirtman is now leading a multi-institutional group to try to answer those questions. They submitted a four-year proposal to the National Science Foundation<\/a><\/span> (NSF) that, if approved, would allow Kirtman and his team to test new algorithms designed to better understand the oceanic and atmospheric phenomena that drive El Ni\u00f1o, and would use that information to test new forecasting models as well. Any improvements to the current-day understanding of El Ni\u00f1o would have profound implications since El Ni\u00f1o influences rainfall and temperature patterns throughout the United States, Mexico, and other countries bordering the Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n

For Kirtman, the key to unlocking the secrets of El Ni\u00f1o starts underwater. He wants to get a better grasp on what\u2019s happening below the surface of the western Pacific Ocean, the driving force behind El Ni\u00f1o. To do so, his team would employ a vast constellation of NOAA satellites that measure the height of the sea surface, buoys that record the temperature of the water below the surface, and drones that track the shifting currents. Then comes the hard part.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real tricky part is we know it\u2019s not just what\u2019s going on below the surface, but noisiness that happens in the atmosphere,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kirtman said that \u201cnoise\u201d has been driving the scientific community mad in recent years. No matter how confident they are in their computer models designed to predict El Ni\u00f1o, those atmospheric disturbances continuously muddle their results. That\u2019s why Kirtman\u2019s proposal will closely examine two atmospheric phenomena that he thinks are to blame.<\/p>\n

The first is the Madden-Julian oscillation<\/a><\/span>, a large-scale weather pattern that moves quickly from the Indian Ocean east over the Pacific. The second is the Indian monsoon<\/span><\/a>, a period of torrential storms that regularly bombards India and its surrounding waters each summer. Combined, Kirtman said those phenomena consistently cripple their results. \u201cIt\u2019s a shock to the system,\u201d he said. \u201cThe predictability technology we\u2019re developing will give us a way to remove that shock.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Madden-Julian<\/center> <\/p>\n

\"Indian<\/center> <\/p>\n

\"SarahTo form his team, Kirtman first turned to a former student whose Ph.D. he supervised at UM: Sarah Larson<\/strong><\/a><\/span>, now an assistant professor and climate scientist at North Carolina State University<\/span><\/a>.<\/span> But he\u2019s also looking to recruit interns from underrepresented groups. Kirtman intends to target students from Miami Dade College<\/a><\/span> and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium<\/a><\/span> (AIHEC), a network of 37 Tribal colleges and universities (TCU\u2019s) in the U.S. But Kirtman doesn\u2019t cite moral reasons for that decision\u2014he explains it by pointing back to science.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me it\u2019s a very quantitative thing. Diversity of models, diversity of ideas, improves the forecast, improves your product,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything I\u2019ve done in the last 20 years tells me diversity makes things better, so I want to tap into that as best I can.\u201d<\/p>\n

As part of Kirtman\u2019s proposal, he would publicly release the data on an ongoing basis throughout the four-year study. He acknowledges that he runs the risk of other scientists using his data to do a quick analysis and beating him to publication, but much like scientists have been cranking out research based on images and data released by NASA from its James Webb Space Telescope<\/span><\/a>, Kirtman feels the overall benefit to science trumps being first to publish.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a balance, it\u2019s a challenge, but I always err on the side of just sharing everything,\u201d he said. \u201cIt grows the science of what we\u2019re working on, it creates a community. That\u2019s something I really like to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For forty years, climate scientists have been trying to develop a computational model that accurately predicts the El Ni\u00f1o\u2013Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. But that work has stagnated in recent years with only minor, gradual improvements to their predictions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,634],"tags":[90,651,653,655,657,652,654,89,656],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1751,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696\/revisions\/1751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idsc.miami.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}