A little about my work

• October 2010 to Present: At WHOI, I am working on various problems including the atmospheric response in the Arctic sea ice conditions (WHOI Arctic Research Initiative), coastal upwelling and sea-breeze variability int the US West Coast (funded by WHOI Independent Study Award), Regional Predictability of the MJO (ONR), Submesoscale air-sea interactions (NASA pending), the role of East Asian Marginal Sea SST variability in the northern hemisphere climate variability (NSF proposal in prep), Hurricane-Ocean interactions (a paper under review).

• August 2008 - October 2010: I am working with Prof. Shang-Ping Xie on various problems related to the regional climate variability and change using the SCOAR model. A novel approach is taken by coupled dynamic downscaling of the future climate change projection by climate models to produce the high-resolution downscaled fields in the tropical Atlantic Ocean. The goal of this study is to investigate the role of ocean dynamic processes such as the tropical instability waves, equatorial currents and upwelling that are not well resolved by climate models in shaping the regional pattern in climate change and SST warming. The result is published in JGR-Ocean 2012. See the paper here

• December 17, 2007 - August 2008: I am a visiting scientist at UCLA Department of Atmospheric and OceanicSciences to work with Roberto Mechoso. Here, I mostly continue what I have been working on the coupled variability in the North Pacific and the Indian Ocean. In addition, with Roberto I will investigate the role of African easterly waves on the tropical Atlantic climate variability and their possible interaction with the tropical instability waves. Data assimilation with coupled simulation in the southeastern Pacific Ocean over the VOCALS domain would be also a possible research topic, with collaboration with Art Miller and a few students at Scripps.

• July- December 2007: I worked at International Pacific Research Center at University of Hawaii, Manoa as a visiting scientist. Here I am working on the NSF-funded project with Niklas Schneider about the North Pacific coupled variability using our SCOAR model. The primary goal here is to initiate the project and perform preliminary tests. One important step is to test SCOAR in NCAR's IBM machines. Once it is shown capable of longterm integrations, we will perform various coupled and complementary uncoupled simulations to investigate local feedback over Kuroshio and the downstream impacts. Besides, I spent some time (will work together more in the future) to work with Shang-Ping Xie on coupled variability in the Indian Ocean. One of the outstanding questions would be the thermocline-SST-wind curl feedback in the southwestern Indian Ocean. Local coupled feedback in the western Arabian Sea and variability of the Findlater Jet, and their impacts on the Indian monsoon will also be my interest. I will also continue work with Markus Jochum, Ragu Murtugudde and his student, Lei Zhou, on the intraseasonal and longer term variability in the ocean and coupling with the intraseasonal variability in the atmosphere such as MJO.

• September 2002 - June 2007: I was a Ph.D. student in Climate Research Division (CRD) and Experimental Climate Prediction Center (ECPC) of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. With Art Miller and John Roads, I am studying the dynamic and thermodynamic processes that lie behind the mesoscale ocean-atmosphere coupled feedback using a high-resolution regional coupled ocean-atmosphere model. Using this model called SCOAR, the main foci of my dissertation research are to investigate the effect of mesoscale coupled variability and its the connection to the larger-scale climate variability. One example includes 1) the simulation of tropical instability waves (TIWs) in the Pacific and the Atlantic, 2) ocean-atmosphere feedback induced by the waves, 3) and the rectification to the large-scale SST and ITCZ in the tropical Atlantic. I am also interested in the synoptic-scale African easterly waves (AEWs) in the tropical Atlantic, and their connection to the cyclogenesis, and the influences on the mean and seasonal variability of the tropical marine ITCZ. Possible research topic of interest would be to examine how these TIWs and AEWs covary and how such variability affects the Atlantic climate, both SST and ITCZ precipitation. Besides, I am interested in the air-sea interaction triggered by small-scale orography and the mesoscale coupled process in the eastern boundary current region such as the California Current System. Please see the publication list above.