Shang-Ping Xie, Dept of Meteorology & IPRC

Research interest: Climate variability and change, Ocean’s role in climate

Major funding sources: NASA, NOAA & NSF

Major collaborators:

US: JPL, Univ Maryland, Oregon State Univ, NCAR, NOAA/GFDL, PMEL, ESRL & AOML

Japan: JAMSTEC, Univ Tokyo, Hokkaido Univ, Tsukuba Univ, Tokyo Univ Marine Sci & Tech

China: Ocean Univ of China, Chinese Academy of Sci, Nanjing Inst Meteorology

Germany: Univ Kiel

Research highlights

• Global warming dynamics

• Satellite observations

• Climate modeling

• Regional climate

growing needs for dynamical approach

Trend/interannual

Tropical Indian Ocean: Canary of the Global Warming?!

Yan Du and Shang-Ping Xie (IPRC/UH Met)

The tropical Indian Ocean emerges as a region of the most robust warming of the global ocean, a trend captured by all IPCC AR4 models.

Indian Ocean temp in AR4 models

Frequency of QuikSCAT high winds (>20 m/s; color = % of time) and SST (°C; contours) 　 during winter months (DJF).

Mapping High Sea Winds from Space T. Sampe and S.-P. Xie (BAMS, 2007 Dec)

Satellite Discoveries Vast oceans are poorly observed by in-situ methods

OFES captures Kuroshio Extension’s decadal oscillationB Taguchi1,2, S-P Xie1, N Schneider1, M Nonaka2, H Sasaki2, Y Sasai2

1. IPRC/UH Met; 2. JAMSTEC (FRCGC & ESC)

Satellite Altimeter (T/P)OFES

Ocean GCM for Earth Simulator(0.1o x 0.1o, 54 levels)

The advent of satellite altimetry and the Earth

Simulator made it possible to study variability of narrow jets

like KE for the first time

1993 2004

Satellite Obs and Modeling Synthesis

Met student

IPRC Regional Ocean-Atmosphere Model (iROAM) on Earth Simulator:

S-P Xie, Y Wang, H Xu, S de Szoeke, J Small, K Richards (IPRC), T Miyama, T Mochizuki, T Awaji (FRCGC)

iROAM

ObsSpin up

Precipitation, surface temperature & wind

Full-physics coupled model that successfully keeps the ITCZ north of the equator.

To become portable to other regions for climate downscaling and process studies.

Long Cloud Trails Lee of Hawaii: Model and Ship Observations

Yang et al. (J Climate); Yang et al. (GRL)

Summer Cloud Amount at 1400 HST

Surface winds: Pennants, full barbs, and half barbs represent 5, 1, and 0.5 m s-¹, respectively.

First in-situ survey onSOEST Student Cruise

December 2006 R/V Kilo Moana

Surface wind & temperature

Regional Climate

IODBasin warming

Subtropical WP variability (local vs. remote forcing)

El Nino

Baiu rain band, Storm tracks (ocean’s role?)

Summer stratus deck

Maritime Continent convection(multi-scale: diurnal, ISV, …)

Monsoon

Atlantic influence

Dynamics of global warmingSatellite observation

Regional climatePaleoclimate dynamics

Looking into the future

Visiting Students Program with Japanese Universities

Hokkaido University President Initiative: $10,000 for FY 2007.

Team up with MEXT’s Centers of Excellence (two Hokkaido-supported students visited already)

JAMSTEC support; explore JSPS/NSF in the future

Dual (master’s) degree program