Tag: Climate Prediction

Ángel Muñoz receives US CLIVAR Early-Career Award

IRI climate scientist Ángel Muñoz has been given an Early Career Scientist Leadership Award by the U.S. Climate Variability and Predictability Program (US CLIVAR) for ‘outstanding contributions to national and international work to advance research and applications of subseasonal-to-seasonal predictions’. US CLIVAR is a national program that coordinates and advances climate prediction research in the […]

Other Climate Patterns that Impact U.S. Winter Climate

By IRI Chief Forecaster Tony BarnstonThis post originally appeared on Climate.gov’s ENSO blog. Reproduced with permission.  While the focus of this blog is ENSO, there are other important climate patterns that impact the United States during the Northern Hemisphere winter season.  We often focus on the winter season because that is the time of year many climate […]

Climate prediction tools show role of oceans in Amazon drought and fire season

In the last decade, warmer sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic have corresponded with below-average precipitation in Peru and western Brazil. The relationship is due to the effect of sea surface temperatures on the location of the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) – a band of clouds and rain stretching around the globe where trade winds […]

IRI’s New Director

Lisa Goddard, a leading expert on climate change and El Niño’s influence on climate has been appointed director of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, part of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. The IRI is devoted to studying climate prediction and helping vulnerable societies anticipate, prevent and manage climate-related events such as droughts, floods […]

A model for improving climate services in Africa

In developed countries, we are accustomed to having access to long and detailed records on weather and climate conditions, demographics, disease incidence and many other types of data. Decision makers use this information for a variety of societal benefits: they spot trends, fine-tune public health systems and optimize crop yields, for example. Researchers use it […]

Fears of a Double Dip…La Niña

What do the economy and tropical ocean temperatures have in common? They’re both exhibiting patterns very similar to 2008. At the International Research Institute for Climate and Society’s monthly climate briefing, chief forecaster Tony Barnston focused more on the latter. He laid out the past and the present and what clues they provide about the future. The […]

R.I.P. La Niña

Attendees observed a brief moment of silence during this month’s climate briefing. Why? Because after nine months, the climate phenomenon La Niña has died. Is there any chance a zombie La Niña could rise from the dead, though? Tony Barnston, IRI’s lead forecaster, answered that question and more. This year’s La Niña was near record setting […]

New Report: The State of Climate Prediction

A new report recently released by the National Research Council called “Assessment of Intraseasonal to Interannual Climate Prediction and Predictability” examines the current state of climate forecasting over time periods of a few weeks to a few years, and makes suggestions on how these forecasts might be improved. The International Research Institute for Climate and […]