Research Highlights
We aim to feature the latest research results from US scientists whose published paper features work that is sponsored by one or more sponsoring agency programs of US CLIVAR (NASA, NOAA, NSF, DOE, ONR). Check out the collection of research highlights below and sort by topic on the right. Interested in submitting an article for consideration? See our Research Highlight Submission Guidelines page for more information.
Leveraging coupled air-sea simulations to recreate wind-driven waves under strong wind conditions, Scapin et al. (2026) demonstrate that the energy dissipated due to ocean wave breaking is determined by the energy stored in the waves, and is not directly dependent on the instantaneous wind speed.
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of multiple fire indices using 13 dynamically downscaled regional climate models from North America CORDEX for the historical reference (1980–2010), mid-century (2030–2060), and end-of-century (2069–2099) periods.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.