Current work:

My postdoctoral work with Dr. Alex Hall is examing the coupled climate system in the southeast Pacific, which is funded by the VOCALS project. I am developing a regional modeling framework to study the atmosphere-ocean-land-biogeochemistry integrated climate system in VOCALS region. Currently the framework consists of a regional atmosphere model, i.e., WRF and the ultimate goal is to couple the atmosphere model to regional ocean and biogeochemistry models.

My ongoing studies focus the mean and various temporal and spatial scale variability of stratocumulus in the southeast Pacific using satellite (e.g., ISCCP, MODIS) and reanalysis (e.g., ERA40, NCEP) data. The key question is what controls the stratrocumulus clouds. Validation of model simulated stratiform clouds and comparison to satellite observations and in-situ measurements are underway. Analogous studies on the stratocumulus in the northeast Pacific is paralleled as a comparison.


Previous work:

My Ph.D. research with Dr. Jin-Yi Yu at UC-Irvine focused on investigating the decadal modulation of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). My tools included both centrury long observational and reanalysis data, paleoclimate proxy data and performing GCM (e.g., CAM3) sensitivity experiments. Besides its wellknown interannual variability, ENSO undergoes a prominent decadal (10-15year) modulation cycle. My study proposed the asymmetry of ENSO's two episodes, El Nino and La Nina and its interactions with the Pacific mean climate explain ENSO's decadal modulation cycle. This decadal modulation cycle and the El Nino-La Nina asymmetry can be served as one of the benchmarks to evaluate current climate models. Further analysis on the archived IPCC-AR4 coupled climate models showed vast diversity among all the models, only a few of which caputure ENSO asymmetry and its decadal modulation while most others do not.

I also diagnosed ENSO simulations in NCAR's CCSM3. It has unrealistic biennial ENSO bias (compared to 2-7year ENSO in observations). Decoupled CCSM3 sensitivity experiments were performed to propose the modeled biennial ENSO to be related to the extensive two-year Asian monsoon variability.

Before I started my Ph.D. dissertation work, I studied the Central America gap wind, resulted from the unique local topography, and its effects on the underlying sea surface temperature annual cycle. Thermal and dynamical effects of gap wind on the annual cycle of eastern Pacific warm pool are differenciated by using ROMS sensitivity experiments and following surface heat budget analysis.