Jingxuan Cui

Westerly Wind Events & Oceanic Kelvin Waves in the Equatorial Pacific

(Schematics of the connections between WWE, OKW, and ENSO)

(Example of an identified WWE and its OKW response)

Eastward-propagating oceanic Kelvin waves (OKWs), which are typically excited by strong westerly wind events (WWEs) in the atmosphere over the equatorial warm-pool region, help modulate upper-ocean thermal characteristics and provide feedback onto important coupled air-sea phenomena such as El Niño onsets. The recent availability of daily thermocline depth fields from several CMIP6 models with a hierarchy of resolutions, allows the analysis of OKW-related processes in climate models and thus raised some science questions. For example - 1) Whether the features of WWEs and OKWs are well-represented in models since they are direct triggers for El Niño onset? 2) To what extent the air-sea coupling between WWEs and OKWs are realisticly described? 3) If biases existing in the above processes, what roles are the upper-ocean biases playing?

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Related research:

Riley Dellaripa et al. (2024), Cui et al. (2024), and Cui et al. (2025, to be submitted)

MJO Features and Teleconnection Changes under Global Warming

(MJO convection and circulation changes under warming, Maloney et al. 2019)

(CESM2 large ensemble's agreement on MJO teleconnection changes)

Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) is a dominant intraseasonal mode in the tropics, playing an important role in affecting global weather and climate through teleconnections (see examples in Stan et al. 2017). How much MJO behaviors have changed and will change could significantly impact precipitation features over extratropical regions such as North American, East Asian, and South American regions. By studying the MJO characteristics and teleconnections from the past century to future warming scenarios through multiple climate models and long-term reanalysis data, we found that MJO propagation speed increases but with different growth rates at different warming stages, and the teleconnections to the Southwest and Southeast US are amplified. They are largely induced by the increased static stability and column moisture, the competition between the both, and the expanded warm-pool under global warming.

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Related research:

Cui et al. (2019), Cui et al. (2022), and Cui et al. (2024, submitted)