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Bienvenue! Welcome!

My current research is performed as a Research Associate in Prof. Greg Hakim's group at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences/ College of the Environment / University of Washington, and focuses on issues related to data assimilation in coupled atmosphere-ocean numerical prediction systems to improve the characterization of the near-term (decadal) climate variability and its predictability.

Decadal climate prediction has emerged as an important yet challenging component of the seamless weather-climate prediction paradigm. A number of overarching scientific challenges need to be addressed in order to make progress in our ability to produce useful predictions of climate variability over temporal horizons of a few years to few decades.

Climate prediction has traditionally been approached from the perspective of a "boundary-value problem", focusing on the long-term (multiple decades to centuries) response of the climate system subjected to external influences (e.g. increasing greenhouse gases, volcanic eruptions and variability in solar activity). However, akin to weather forecasting, the climate prediction problem over shorter (seasonal to interannual to decadal) timescales also has to be posed as an initial-value problem as there is evidence that some prediction inadequacies are related to how initial conditions are determined. However, it remains unclear which is the optimal way to initialize coupled atmosphere-ocean models to produce improved projections of climate variability. This is one of the central unanswered questions involved in decadal climate prediction. 

My research therefore aims at developing a data assimilation methodology adapted to this problem. The focus is on determining how to best produce initial conditions which incorporate proper representations of the coupled atmosphere-ocean interactions underlying the low-frequency internal variability of the climate system.

What's new...

[Feb. 2012] : Slight changes in page design, new Washington state webcam views added on the Webcam page and additions in the Seattle section of the Life & Culture page.
[Jan. 2012] : New Seattle webcam views added on the Webcam page.
[Dec. 2011] : More local weather information in the right column on this page and constantly updating the Seattle section of the Life & Culture page
[Nov. 2011] : This web page... ;-)