Our research is primarily focused on large-scale climate dynamics in both the atmosphere and ocean and all around the world. The Earth climate system contains many internal modes of variability – i.e., preferred configurations of the state of the atmosphere and ocean that naturally occur on multiple timescales. Our mechanistic understanding of the dynamics of the formation of these patterns, how they interact with each other, and how their characteristic shapes and frequencies may change under future climate change are all open questions in the climate dynamics community. Our enhanced understanding of these large-scale modes of variability has direct applications to:
- Improving sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasts of temperature and precipitation.
- Enhancing our understanding of decadal-scale projections of climate / climate trends.
- Assessing the fidelity of coupled climate models in reproducing the Earth physical climate system.
- Providing quantitative and qualitative information for stakeholders (e.g., resource managers, city planners, general public) for better preparedness for extreme weather and future climate change.
The Applied Climate Dynamics Research Group at the University of Oklahoma focus on using observations (e.g., station data, satellite products, and reanalysis datasets) and climate models (both designed experiments and already-existing model output) for our studies. We use a variety of statistical approaches and forecasting techniques in our research with the goal of applying the results to operations in the science and in the private sector. Thus, graduate students and post-docs studying in this group have a well-rounded, application-oriented research experience.
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