The Climate Variability & Predictability (CVP) Program at NOAA - DYNAMO Recent Project Advancements

The Climate Variability & Predictability (CVP) Program supports research aimed at providing process-level understanding of the climate system through observation, modeling, analysis, and field studies. This vital knowledge is needed to improve climate models and predictions so that scientists can better anticipate the impacts of future climate variability and change.

To achieve its mission, the CVP Program supports research carried out at NOAA and other federal laboratories, NOAA Cooperative Institutes, and academic institutions. The Program also coordinates its sponsored projects with major national and international scientific bodies including the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The CVP program sits within the NOAA Climate Program Office.

Dynamics of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (DYNAMO): The Indian Ocean is one of Earth’s most sensitive regions because the interactions between ocean and atmosphere there have a discernable effect on global climate patterns. The tropical weather that brews in that region can move eastward along the equator and reverberate around the globe, shaping weather and climate in far-off places. The vehicle for this variability is a phenomenon called the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO. The MJO, which originates over the Indian Ocean roughly every 30 to 90 days, is known to influence the Asian and Australian monsoons. It can also enhance hurricane activity in the northeast Pacific and Gulf of Mexico, trigger torrential rainfall along the west coast of North America, and affect the onset of El Niño.

CVP-funded scientists participated in the DYNAMO field campaign in 2011-12. Results from this international campaign are expected to provide a better understanding of the processes governing MJO, which is an essential step toward improving their representations in numerical models and improving MJO simulation and prediction. This poster will be a programmatically-focused presentation covering results from MJO and DYNAMO projects funded by the CVP Program. Over the last 6 years, CVP has funded 20 projects including support for the DYNAMO observational campaign, post-field data analysis and modeling, and model improvement studies (CPT). Recent results from CVP-funded projects will be summarized in this poster. (http://cpo.noaa.gov/CVP)