Hurricane Modeling

• Regional model of the Atlantic hurricane season and its sensitivity to climate change
• Global models of hurricane frequency climatology
• Operational track and intensity forecasting

Recent Papers

• Zhao, Held, Lin, and Vecchi, submitted: Simulations of global hurricane climatology, interannual variability, and response to global warming using a 50km resolution GCM. Journal of Climate.
• Knutson, Sirutis, Garner, Vecchi, and Held, 2008: Simulated reduction in Atlantic hurricane frequency under twenty-first-century warming conditions. Nature Geoscience.
  

High Resolution Modeling

Develop high resolution atmospheric models for improved simulations of the atmospheric climate, and for studies of regional climate change and of extreme weather.

• Atmospheric "dynamical cores" -- algorithms for representing the fluid dynamical component of atmospheric models
• NARCCAP - North American Regional Climate Change and Assessment Program
• C180 and C360 HIRAM -- 50km and 25km horizontal resolution global models
• Ultra-high resolution cloud resolving, non-hydrostatic global models

Recent Papers

• Putman, W M., and S.-J. Lin, 2007: Finite-volume transport on various cubed-sphere grids. Journal of Computational Physics.
  

General Circulation Dynamics

Study a variety of idealized general circulation models to develop our understanding of the atmospheric climate and help optimize GFDL's atmospheric model development efforts, with an emphasis on the interplay between the atmospheric hydrological cycle and the general circulation.

• Atmospheric dynamics underlying tropical precipitation patterns
• Rotating and non-rotating horizontally homogeneous atmospheres
• Analyses of climate sensitivity and feedbacks
• Idealized models of midlatitude storm tracks
• Publically available idealized models

Recent Papers

• Held, I., and M. Zhao, 2008: Horizontally homogeneous rotating radiative-convective Equilibria at GCM resolution. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
• Chen, G, and I. Held, 2007: Phase speed spectra and the recent poleward shift of Southern Hemisphere surface westerlies. Geophysical Research Letters.
• Rivière, G, and I. Orlanski, 2007: Characteristics of the Atlantic storm-track eddy activity and its relation with the North Atlantic Oscillation. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.
• Garner, S. T., D. M. W. Frierson, I. Held, O. M. Pauluis, and G. K. Vallis, 2007: Resolving convection in a global hypohydrostatic model. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.