Details for Climate links between remote regions (Teleconnections): Structure and Mechanisms

Faculty:	Nigam, Sumant
Department:	Atmospheric & Oceanic Science
Lab:
Campus Phone:	301-405-5381
Campus Address:	3419 Computer & Space Sciences Building
Email:	nigam@umd.edu
Project Details: The term teleconnection is used in atmospheric sciences to describe the climate links between geographically separated regions. The remote region need not exhibit fluctuations of the same sign in order to be "teleconnected." In fact, the interesting teleconnections often involve contemporaneous variations of opposite signs. For example, winter variations in temperature and rainfall over southern Europe and the Iberian peninsula are frequently opposite to those over northwestern Europe and Scandinavia; the underlying variability pattern is called the North Atlantic Oscillation. The North American winters are, in fact, influenced by a number of teleconnnection patterns, including the one excited by the El Nino related warming of tropical Pacific sea-surface temperatures. The project will focus on characterizing the hydroclimate footprints of these patterns in observations and in state-of-the-art ocean-atmosphere model simulations/projections of current/future climates.
Required Skills:	Second/third year students with interest/expertise in statistical analysis (e.g., correlations, analysis of variance); with GPA of at least 3.50. Familiarity with MATLAB or comparable software packages will be helpful, as will be exposure to computer programming (Fortran) and UNIX OS.
Recommended Skills:	Background in Physics, Applied Math, or Environmental Sciences is preferred.
Other Information:	Please visit http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~nigam/ for more information on ongoing research activities