Research Highlights

A new study by Marsico et al. (2026) shows how the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO)'s evolution is driven by superposition of a 45-day period "fast" mode and a newly identified 70-day period  "slow" mode, rather than indices that treat the MJO as a single wave. 

Joshi and Zhang (2025) demonstrate that southward advection of upper extratropical-tropical North Atlantic signals by the North Atlantic subtropical gyre plays a central role in forming the characteristic cold SST horseshoe pattern, rather than wind-evaporation-SST feedback.

Kessenich et al. (2025) analyzes projected changes in CONUS fire weather and compares the responses of multiple fire indices using 13 dynamically downscaled regional climate models from North America CORDEX for the historical reference (1980–2010), mid-century (2030–2060), and end-of-century (2069–2099) periods.

A new study by Chang et al. (2025) using unprecedented high-resolution global climate simulation ensembles highlights major advances in representing mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) over global land and provides fresh insight into their role in driving future extreme precipitation changes. These simulation ensembles–produced at 10-25 kilometer resolution–are part of a collaborative modeling effort that enables robust assessment of mesoscale processes previously inaccessible to standard 100-kilometer low-resolution global models.

Kamnani et al. (2025) present the first systematic global assessment of how consistently different regions exhibit a dominant atmospheric river (AR) season, tracking how often regional peaks repeat across regions and detection methods. Some regions, like East Asia, show a strong peak, while other regions such as the South Atlantic, exhibit no seasonal and annual shifts. The study shows that AR seasonality inconsistencies arise both from detection-method differences and variability in atmospheric moisture transport, reshaping our understanding of AR seasonality and underscoring the important of regional context.