North Atlantic Warming Hole
With global climate change, we are seeing a general increase in sea surface temperatures in the world’s oceans. One exception to this rule is in the North Atlantic where there is an absence of warming in both observations and future modeling studies. So far, we have conducted a series of studies that aim to better understand the causes and impacts of the NAWH. We examined the mechanisms responsible for the development of the North Atlantic Warming Hole within the fully coupled Community Earth System Model Large Ensemble (Gervais et al. 2018). We also conducted a set of atmosphere-only large ensemble experiments to assess the impact of the NAWH on the mean atmospheric state (Gervais et al. 2019) and the impact of the NAWH on atmospheric variability (Gervais et al. 2020).
Decadal Climate Prediction
The accurate prediction of climate 1-20 years in the future can provide governments and industries the critical ability to make decisions on actionable timescales. Predictability on these decadal timescales derives predominantly from ocean variability and its coupled interactions with other components of the climate system. I am interested in furthering our understanding of these coupled interactions and investigating new ways of conducting skillful predictions.
Sea Ice – Atmosphere interactions
I’m interested in furthering our understanding of the two-way interaction between the atmosphere and Arctic sea ice. This includes processes on a variety of time scales from better understanding seasonal sea ice variability to the impacts of future changes in Arctic sea ice might impact atmospheric variability.
Impacts of Climate Change on Atmospheric Variability
The impacts of climate change will be felt by society through sensible weather. To this end, I am interested in studying how our climate models are able to simulate this variability and the mechanisms through which the atmospheric variability may change in the future. This includes but is not limited to, changes in Arctic air masses, Rossby Waves, and precipitation.
