AOSC Seminar by Dr. Qiang Fu, 04/24/2025
AOSC Seminar
Qiang Fu
University of Washington
Title
From enhanced Arctic amplification to Tropical Eastern Pacific and Southern Ocean cooling since 1980: The role of internal variability
Abstract
The Arctic Amplification (AA) - the faster warming of the Arctic compared to the global average – is well captured by climate models, yet they underestimate the observed AA of over 4 since 1980. At the same time, observed cooling in the Tropical Eastern Pacific and Southern Ocean is largely absent in model simulations. Whether these discrepancies stem from internal variability or model biases remains debated. In this talk, we introduce a machine learning approach to isolate Internal temperature trends in observations. We find that internal variability has enhanced Arctic warming but suppressed global warming since 1980, increasing observed AA from 3.0 to 4.2. We reveal that Internal variability manifested as Global Cooling and Arctic Warming (i‐GCAW) is rare in CMIP6 large ensembles, but simulations that produce i‐GCAW exhibit a robust internally driven global surface air temperature (SAT) trend pattern, showing enhanced warming in the Barents and Kara Sea but cooling in the Tropical Eastern Pacific and Southern Ocean. These results highlight the critical role of internal variability in reconciling observed and modeled surface temperature trends.
Bio
TBAQiang Fu is the Calvin Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Peking University and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Utah. He was on the faculty at Canada’s Dalhousie University before joining the UW in 2000, where he has been a full professor since 2006. Fu’s main research interests include atmospheric radiation and cloud processes, atmospheric remote sensing, cloud/aerosol/radiation/climate interactions, stratospheric circulation and stratosphere-troposphere exchanges/coupling, and climate and climate change. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Washington State Academy of Sciences (WSAS), and a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). His many honors include the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award and the AMS Jule G. Charney Medal, recognizing his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. See more information at https://atmos.washington.edu/~qfu/.
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AOSC Seminar
Pre-seminar refreshment: N/A
Seminar: 3:30-4:30pm, Room: ATL 2400(only when in-person)
Meet-the-Speaker: 4:30-5:00pm, Room: ATL 3400(only when in-person) [For AOSC Students only]
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