Research Highlights

Under global warming, the ITCZ is projected to shift towards the equator, leading to squeeze in the annual-mean tropical ascent and far-reaching impacts on global circulation. Zhou and coauthors researched the observed and projected ITCZ changes based on a variety of observation and reanalysis datasets and ensemble projections of climate models, and found that the observed ITCZ changes are largely opposite to the projected future changes.

Najibi, Devineni, and co-authors present a new idea defined as simultaneous heavy precipitation events (SHPEs) to quantify extreme regional precipitation considering the spatial structure of extreme events. Quantifying the characteristics of SHPEs and modeling their footprints can improve the projections of flood risk and understanding of damages to interconnected infrastructure systems.

In a recently published Geophysical Research Letters paper, Elipot demonstrates how a new ocean observing system for measuring local and global sea level changes could piggy-back on the existing array of freely drifting buoys.

In a recent article published in Geophysical Research Letters, researchers investigate the origins of the upper limb of the AMOC at 6°S, from different sections in the global ocean, by determining Lagrangian trajectories and tracing particles backward in time for 2,011 years.

A recent study by Song et al. discovered contrasting phase changes of the precipitation annual cycle between land and ocean under global warming, with land delay and ocean advance by examining simulations from 37 CMIP5 models and five large ensembles. They found that the seasonal delay of lands is mainly attributable to the increased effective heat capacity, while there exists a competing mechanism against the impact of increased capacity for the ocean precipitation.