Ocean, convection, adaptation: three new working groups starting at MPI-M
CDY: “Theoretical Ocean Dynamics”
Director Sarah Kang is expanding her “Climate Dynamics” (CDY) department with a group on “Theoretical Ocean Dynamics”, established and headed by the oceanographer Noel Brizuela, formerly a researcher at Columbia University in the USA. His group is going to investigate how ocean turbulence affects energy transfer in the ocean. “My toolkit is entirely oceanographic, but the questions are all about the climate,” says Brizuela, who conducted his PhD research at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. “I want to revisit theories of climate variability through the lens of ocean turbulence.” This could help to uncover a new set of ocean-atmosphere feedbacks that have not been considered before. In particular, the group will study the interplay between the Southern Ocean and the tropical Pacific as well as the Pacific upwelling off the Peruvian coast.
CPH: “Scale Interaction Modeling”
The new addition to the “Climate Physics” (CPH) department of Director Bjorn Stevens is a working group on “Scale Interaction Modeling”, headed by MPI-M scientist Hans Segura, who was previously working in the group of Cathy Hohenegger. He received his PhD from the Université Grenoble Alpes in France and joined MPI-M in 2021. Segura’s newly established group aims at identifying the interaction of different scales in atmospheric convection: from the microscale processes transporting energy at the air-sea and air-land interface to convective storms and large-scale circulation. The research will initially focus on convective regions, where light winds and warm ocean surfaces interact. The main tools will be simulations that explicitly resolve storms and ocean eddies as well as observational data. Those are available, among other things, from the recent ORCESTRA campaign in the tropical Atlantic, in which Segura participated.
CVR: “Climate Impacts and Adaptation”
An interdepartmental research group is established in the “Climate Variability” (CVR) department of Jochem Marotzke and jointly supported by Steven’s CPH department: Chao Li’s interdisciplinary group “Climate Impacts and Adaptation” will study the interplay between climate change and the economy on a global and regional level. In particular, the research is going to focus on the role of natural climate variability in this context. To this end, the group will use kilometer-scale Earth System Models and develop Integrated Assessment Models. “Our approach integrates advanced climate science with economic analysis to produce information that can be used in local climate change adaptation planning“, says group leader Chao Li, who has been working with MPI-M for 17 years in the group of Director Jochem Marotzke. Li has played a crucial role in fostering the cooperation between MPI-M and the Institute for Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he was appointed Distinguished Guest Professor in 2024.
Contact
Dr. Noel Brizuela
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
noel.brizuela@mpimet.mpg.de
Dr. Hans Segura
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
hans.segura@mpimet.mpg.de
Dr. Chao Li
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
chao.li@mpimet.mpg.de