How to tame a child: the dynamics of persistent El Niño Southern Oscillation events
- Academic lead
- Prof Amanda Maycock, School of Earth and Environment, a.c.maycock@leeds.ac.uk
- Industrial lead
- Prof Adam Scaife, Met Office Hadley Centre, adam.scaife@metoffice.gov.uk
- Co-supervisor(s)
- Dr Stephen Griffiths, School of Mathematics, s.d.griffiths@leeds.ac.uk, Chris Kent, Met Office Hadley Centre, chris.kent@metoffice.gov.uk (External)
- Project themes
- Climate & Weather, Computational & Analytical Tools, Data-driven methods, Environmental Flows
This project seeks to advance our ability to forecast the most important driver of year-to-year climate variability, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). ENSO causes severe weather and climate hazards across the world, so it is important to have skilful forecasts to underpin early warning systems. ENSO involves strong coupling between the atmosphere and ocean and is rooted in fluid dynamics. Intriguingly, some ENSO events do not follow the typical behaviour and instead persist for several years. This suggests unique dynamical behaviour, but the mechanisms are not well known. This project will combine fluid dynamical theory with data-driven analysis methods and novel modelling techniques to identify the mechanisms that cause some ENSO events to persist. In the first stage of the project, you will use the Met Office’s state-of-the-art climate model to study the dynamics of select multi-year ENSO events and test key hypotheses. The second stage of the project will build on very new findings published in the journal Science, which show a delayed effect of ENSO in the midlatitudes from slowly propagating atmospheric angular momentum anomalies. This is important for interpreting regional climate signals of ENSO. You will explore descriptions for the propagating angular momentum anomalies based on fluid dynamical theory. The outcomes of the project will support advances in multi-annual climate prediction, which has a range of applications in agriculture, energy, transport and health sectors. The student will have the opportunity to visit the Met Office during the project to work with the co-supervisors for up to 3 months.