We investigate how the atmosphere’s interaction with the ocean and the land shapes the general circulation—the large-scale flow of air that drives climate and weather patterns worldwide.
We study the coupled dynamics governing the formation of sea surface temperature patterns. The “pattern effect” is a prime example for the tight coupling between the atmosphere and the underlying surface: The uneven warming of sea surface temperatures (the “SST pattern”) instigates changes in the atmospheric circulation. These circulation changes determine how the atmosphere redistributes heat and regulates Earth’s radiation balance, which in turn feeds back onto the ocean temperatures.
In climate dynamics, the ocean is often viewed as the dynamically important component, while the land “just follows”. We illuminate how the land can actively shape the large-scale circulation in ways that have previously been neglected. In doing so, we question established concepts about the fundamentals of coupled climate dynamics.
Due to their different typical time scales, land, ocean, and atmosphere can produce complex, time-dependent behavior when coupled. Beyond long-term equilibria, we are especially interested in the transient changes that govern the climate humans will experience in the coming decades.
Current research topics
- How are the Walker and Hadley circulations coupled?
- Which Walker circulation changes during ENSO can be attributed to mean warming vs. pattern changes?
- How does the existence of land shape the Walker circulation?
- How well do climate models capture land warming?
- What is the transient ITCZ response to climate change?
- How do forced ITCZ shifts vary by season?
- Which physical mechanisms drive the observed South-Eastern Pacific cooling?
- What distinguishes the climate response to long-wave vs. short-wave forcing?
- What is the climate sensitivity in global storm-resolving models?
- How does uncertainty in atmosphere-ocean coupling and parameterizations affect the uncertainty of impacts of solar geoengineering?
- How does the Southern-Ocean-to-tropical teleconnection impact tropical carbon uptake?
Group members and publications
- Beobide Arsuaga, G., Suarez Gutierrez, L., Barkhordarian, A., Olonscheck, D. & Baehr, J. (2025). Increasing central and northern European summer heatwave intensity due to forced internal variability changes. ResearchSquare, . doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-6377558/v1 [Preprint] [pre-print][supplementary-material]
- Bordoni, S., Kang, S., Shaw, T., Simpson, I. & Zanna, L. (2025). The futures of climate modeling. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 8: 99 (2025). doi:10.1038/s41612-025-00955-8 [publisher-version]
- Dhame, S., Olonscheck, D. & Rugenstein, M. (2025). Higher-Resolution Climate Models Do Not Consistently Reproduce the Observed Tropical Pacific Warming Pattern. Journal of Climate, 38(13), 3131-3149. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-24-0248.1 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Egerer, S., Lawrence, D., Lawrence, P., Argles, A., Arora, V., Barbu, A., Harman, I., Miller, P., Raddatz, T., Vuichard, N., Wårlind, D., Ziehn, T. & Pongratz, J. (2025). Forestation in CMIP6: wide model spread in tree cover and land carbon uptake. Environmental Research Letters, 20(5): 054033. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/adc93e [publisher-version]
- Frigola, A., Martin-Martinez, E., Moreno-Chamarro, E., Samsó, M., Loosvelt-Tomas, S., Bretonnière, P.-A., Kuznetsova, D., Lin, X. & Ortega, P. (2025). The North Atlantic mean state in eddy-resolving coupled models: a multimodel study (under open review for Ocean Science). EGUsphere, . doi:10.5194/egusphere-2025-547 [Preprint] [pre-print]
- Geng, Y.-F., Xie, S.-P., Zheng, X.-T., Wang, H., Kang, S., Lin, X., Wu, L. & Song, F. (2025). Magnitude uncertainty dominates intermodel spread in zonal-mean precipitation response to anthropogenic aerosol increase. Science Advances, 11(37): eadv5013. doi:10.1126/sciadv.adv5013 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Günther, M., Kang, S. & Kaspi, Y. (2025). Heating the land cools the eastern and equatorial Pacific. ResearchSquare, . doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-7189653/v1 [Preprint] [pre-print][supplementary-material]
- Günther, M., Kang, S. & Kaspi, Y. (2025). Positive forcing over land cools the Eastern Pacific Ocean. . EGU General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-3714 [abstract]
- Guo, S., Havermann, F., De Hertog, S., Luo, F., Manola, I., Raddatz, T., Li, H., Thiery, W., Lejeune, Q., Schleussner, C.-F., Wårlind, D., Nieradzik, L. & Pongratz, J. (2025). Remote carbon cycle changes are overlooked impacts of land-cover and land management changes. Earth System Dynamics, 16(2), 621-666. doi:10.5194/esd-16-631-2025 [publisher-version]
- Hegde, R., Günther, M., Schmidt, H. & Kroll, C. (2025). Surface temperature dependence of stratospheric sulfate aerosol clear-sky forcing and feedback. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 25(7), 3873-3887. doi:10.5194/acp-25-3873-2025 [research-data][publisher-version]
- Hohenegger, C., Warenau, S., Shaw, T. & Kang, S. (2025). New look at humidity trends. . EGU General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-6554 [abstract]
- Hwang, Y.-T., Xie, S.-P., Chen, P.-J., Tseng, H.-Y., Deser, C., Yeh, H.-C., Chen, Y.-J., Dong, Y., Watanabe, M., Kang, S. & Stuecker, M. (2025). Decoding the anthropogenic influences on Pacific warming patterns. . EGU General Assembly. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-13127 [abstract]
- Jeong, H., Park, H.-S., Kang, S. & Chung, E.-S. (2025). The greater role of Southern Ocean warming compared to Arctic warming in shifting future tropical rainfall patterns. Nature Communications, 16: 2790. doi:10.1038/s41467-025-57654-4 [publisher-version][supplementary-material][any-fulltext]
- Kang, S. & Lee, D. (2025). Effective climate sensitivity increases with enhanced shortwave absorption by water vapor due to its impact on AMOC recovery. . EGU General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-11416 [abstract]
- Kang, S., Watanabe, M. & Gayler, V. (2025). Common and distinct drivers of convective mass flux and Walker circulation changes. Geophysical Research Letters, 52(4): e2024GL111897. doi:10.1029/2024GL111897 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Kang, S. & Olonscheck, D. (2025). Contrasting responses to hemispheric forcing govern the evolution of the CO2-induced equatorial Pacific warming pattern. . EGU General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-10898 [abstract]
- Kim, H., Kang, S., Pendergrass, A., Lehner, F., Shin, Y., Ceppi, P., Yeh, S.-W. & Song, S.-Y. (2025). Higher precipitation in East Asia and western United States expected with future Southern Ocean warming. Nature Geoscience, 18, 313-321. doi:10.1038/s41561-025-01669-5 [supplementary-material][publisher-version]
- Lange, A., Niemeier, U., Rozanov, A. & von Savigny, C. (2025). Investigating the ability of satellite occultation instruments to monitor possible geoengineering experiments. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 25(19), 11673-11688. doi:10.5194/acp-25-11673-2025 [publisher-version]
- Lee, D., Shin, Y., Kim, H. & Kang, S. (2025). Oceanic role in the teleconnection from Southern Ocean to tropical Pacific. . EGU General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-21795 [abstract]
- Lee, D., Kim, H. & Kang, S. (2025). Enhanced shortwave absorption by water vapor increases effective climate sensitivity via accelerated AMOC recovery. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 8: 283. doi:10.1038/s41612-025-01169-8 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Martin-Martinez, E., Frigola, A., Moreno-Chamarro, E., Kuznetsova, D., Loosveldt-Tomas, S., Samsó Cabré, M., Bretonnière, P.-A. & Ortega, P. (2025). Effect of horizontal resolution in North Atlantic mixing and ocean circulation in the EC-Earth3P HighResMIP simulations. Earth System Dynamics, 16(4), 1343-1364. doi:10.5194/esd-16-1343-2025 [publisher-version]
- Mauritsen, T., Tsushima, Y., Meyssignac, B., Loeb, N., Hakuba, M., Pilewskie, P., Cole, J., Suzuki, K., Ackerman, T., Allan, R., Andrews, T., Bender, F.-M., Bloch-Johnson, J., Bodas-Salcedo, A., Brookshaw, A., Ceppi, P., Clerbaux, N., Dessler, A., Donohoe, A., Dufresne, J.-L., Eyring, V., Findell, K., Gettelman, A., Gristey, J., Hawkins, E., Heimbach, P., Hewitt, H., Jeevanjee, N., Jones, C., Kang, S., Kato, S., Kay, J., Klein, S., Knutti, R., Kramer, R., Lee, J.-Y., McCoy, D., Medeiros, B., Megner, L., Modak, A., Ogura, T., Palmer, M., Paynter, D., Quaas, J., Ramanathan, V., Ringer, M., von Schuckmann, K., Sherwood, S., Stevens, B., Tan, I., Tselioudis, G., Sutton, R., Voigt, A., Watanabe, M., Webb, M., Wild, M. & Zelinka, M. (2025). Earth's energy imbalance more than doubled in recent decades. AGU Advances, 6(3): e2024AV001636. doi:10.1029/2024AV001636 [publisher-version][any-fulltext][any-fulltext][any-fulltext][any-fulltext]
- Montanari, A., Barros, A., Becker, T., Bierkens, M., Billings, S., Cardenas, M., Davidson, E., Gruber, N., Hofmann, E., Hudson, M., Illangasekare, T., Kang, S., Moreno, M., Nimmo, F., Paxton, L., Primeau, F., Salters, V., Schimel, D., Stevens, B., Stocker, T., Su, H., Tierney, J., Trumbore, S., Wuebbles, D., Zeitler, P., Zhang, B. & Zhang, X. (2025). Thank you to our 2024 reviewers. AGU Advances, 6(2): e2025AV001711. doi:10.1029/2025AV001711 [publisher-version]
- Moreno-Chamarro, E., Putrasahan, D. & Kang, S. (2025). Initial equatorial Pacific cooling due to CO2 forcing shaped by internal variability. . EGU General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-3969 [abstract]
- Moreno-Chamarro, E., Arsouze, T., Acosta, M., Bretonnière, P.-A., Castrillo, M., Ferrer, E., Frigola, A., Kuznetsova, D., Martin-Martinez, E., Ortega, P. & Palomas, S. (2025). The very-high resolution configuration of the EC-Earth global model for HighResMIP. Geoscientific Model Development, 18, 461-482. doi:10.5194/gmd-18-461-2025 [publisher-version]
- Ogawa, F., Minobe, S., Roberts, M., Haarsma, R., Putrasahan, D., Scoccimarro, E., Terray, L. & Vidale, P. (2025). Cause of the recent tendency of tropical cyclones approaching coasts as revealed by HighResMIP-PRIMAVERA simulations. Journal of Climate, 38(5), 1351-1364. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-24-0173.1 [publisher-version]
- Pan, X. & Li, T. (2025). Diversity of La Niña onset. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 8: 265 (2025). doi:10.1038/s41612-025-01141-6 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Putrasahan, D. & von Storch, J.-S. (2025). Temporal and spatial scale dependency of air-sea interactions via the vertical mixing mechanism. Geophysical Research Letters, 52(14): e2025GL114856. doi:10.1029/2025GL114856 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Schimmer, R. & Kang, S. (2025). Anti-correlated Hadley and Walker circulations through cloud radiative feedback. . EGU General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18509 [abstract]
- Segura, H., Bayley, C., Fiévet, R., Glöckner, H., Günther, M., Kluft, L., Naumann, A., Ortega, S., Praturi, D., Rixen, M., Schmidt, H., Winkler, M., Hohenegger, C. & Stevens, B. (2025). A single tropical rainbelt in global storm-resolving models: the role of surface heat fluxes over the warm pool. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 17(7): e2024MS004897. doi:10.1029/2024MS004897 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Shaw, T., Toda, M. & Kang, S. (2025). Minimal impact of methane on satellite-era climate change. . EGU General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-12604 [abstract]
- Toda, M., Shaw, T. & Kang, S. (2025). Minimal impact of methane on satellite-era regional climate change. Research Square, . doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-6097952/v1 [Preprint] [pre-print][supplementary-material]
- Zhang, J. & Kang, S. (2025). Shifting dynamics of the ITCZ: from widening to narrowing in response to abrupt 4xCO2. . EGU General Assembly 2025. Vienna, Austria. 2025-04-27 - 2025-05-01 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18271 [abstract]
- Barkhordarian, A., Nielsen, D., Olonscheck, D. & Baehr, J. (2024). Arctic marine heatwaves forced by greenhouse gases and triggered by abrupt sea-ice melt. Communications Earth and Environment, 5: 57. doi:10.1038/s43247-024-01215-y [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Barros, A., Becker, T., Cardenas, M., Davidson, E., Gruber, N., Hofmann, E., Hudson, M., llangasekare, T., Kang, S., Montanari, A., Moreno, M., Nimmo, F., Paxton, L., Primeau, F., Salters, V., Schimel, D., Stevens, B., Su, H., Tierney, J., Trumbore, S., Wuebbles, D., Zeitler, P., Zhang, B. & Zhang, X. (2024). Thank You to Our 2023 Peer Reviewers. AGU Advances, 5: e2024AV001290. doi:10.1029/2024AV001290 [publisher-version]
- Gao, J., Minobe, S., Roberts, M., Haarsma, R., Putrasahan, D., Scoccimarro, E., Terray, L. & Vidale, P. (2024). Projected future changes in bomb cyclones by the HighResMIP-PRIMAVERA multimodel ensemble. Climate Dynamics. doi:10.1007/s00382-024-07327-7
- Kang, J., Shaw, T., Kang, S., Simpson, I. & Yu, Y. (2024). Revisiting the reanalysis-model discrepancy in Southern Hemisphere winter storm track trends. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 7: 252. [publisher-version]
- Kang, S., Watanabe, M., Collins, M., Hwang, Y.-T., McGregor, S. & Stuecker, M. (2024). Remote mechanisms for shifting the tropical Pacific warming pattern. . EGU General Assembly 2024. Wien. 2024-04-14 - 2024-04-19 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu24-3098 [abstract]
- Kim, D., Kang, S., Kim, H. & Taylor, P. (2024). Quantifying changes in the Arctic shortwave cloud radiative effects. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 129: e2023JD040707. doi:10.1029/2023JD040707 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Kim, H., Kang, S., Pendergrass, A., Lehner, F., Shin, Y., Ceppi, P., Yeh, S.-W. & Song, S.-Y. (2024). Wetter East Asia and Western United States with projected delayed Southern Ocean warming. doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-4259688/v1 [Preprint] [pre-print]
- Liu, F., Li, X., Luo, Y., Cai, W., Lu, J., Zheng, X., Kang, S., Wang, H. & Zhou, L. (2024). Increased Asian aerosols drive a slowdown of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Nature Communications, 15: 18. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-44597-x [publisher-version]
- Proske, U., Brüggemann, N., Gärtner, J., Gutjahr, O., Haak, H., Putrasahan, D. & Wieners, K.-H. (2024). A case for open communication of bugs in climate models, made with ICON version 2024.01. EGUsphere, . doi:10.5194/egusphere-2024-3493 [Preprint] [pre-print]
- Stevens, B., Adami, S., Ali, T., Anzt, H., Aslan, Z., Attinger, S., Bäck, J., Baehr, J., Bauer, P., Bernier, N., Bishop, B., Bockelmann, H., Bony, S., Bouchet, V., Brasseur, G., Bresch, D., Breyer, S., Brunet, G., Buttigieg, P., Cao, J., Castet, C., Cheng, Y., Dey Choudhury, A., Coen, D., Crewell, S., Dabholkar, A., Dai, Q., Doblas-Reyes, F., Durran, D., El Gaidi, A., Ewen, C., Exarchou, E., Eyring, V., Falkinhoff, F., Farrell, D., Forster, P., Frassoni, A., Frauen, C., Fuhrer, O., Gani, S., Gerber, E., Goldfarb, D., Grieger, J., Gruber, N., Hazeleger, W., Herken, R., Hewitt, C., Hoefler, T., Hsu, H.-H., Jacob, D., Jahn, A., Jakob, C., Jung, T., Kadow, C., Kang, I.-S., Kang, S., Kashinath, K., Kleinen-von Königslöw, K., Klocke, D., Kloenne, U., Klöwer, M., Kodama, C., Kollet, S., Kölling, T., Kontkanen, J., Kopp, S., Koran, M., Kulmala, M., Lappalainen, H., Latifi, F., Lawrence, B., Lee, J., Lejeun, Q., Lessig, C., Li, C., Lippert, T., Luterbacher, J., Manninen, P., Marotzke, J., Matsouoka, S., Merchant, C., Messmer, P., Michel, G., Michielsen, K., Miyakawa, T., Müller, J., Munir, R., Narayanasetti, S., Ndiaye, O., Nobre, C., Oberg, A., Oki, R., Özkan-Haller, T., Palmer, T., Posey, S., Prein, A., Primus, O., Pritchard, M., Pullen, J., Putrasahan, D., Quaas, J., Raghavan, K., Ramaswamy, V., Rapp, M., Rauser, F., Reichstein, M., Revi, A., Saluja, S., Satoh, M., Schemann, V., Schemm, S., Schnadt Poberaj, C., Schulthess, T., Senior, C., Shukla, J., Singh, M., Slingo, J., Sobel, A., Solman, S., Spitzer, J., Stier, P., Stocker, T., Strock, S., Su, H., Taalas, P., Taylor, J., Tegtmeier, S., Teutsch, G., Tompkins, A., Ulbrich, U., Vidale, P.-L., Wu, C.-M., Xu, H., Zaki, N., Zanna, L., Zhou, T. & Ziemen, F. (2024). Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE). Earth System Science Data, 16, 2113-2122. doi:10.5194/essd-16-2113-2024 [publisher-version]
- Timmreck, C., D'Agostino, R., Fang, S.-W., Ballinger, A., Hegerl, G., Kang, S. & Olonscheck, D. (2024). Relative role of land and ocean in shaping tropical hydroclimate after large volcanic eruptions. . EGU General Assembly 2024. Wien. 2024-04-14 - 2024-04-19 doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu24-6543 [abstract]
- Toda, M., Kosaka, Y., Miyamoto, A. & Watanabe, M. (2024). Walker circulation strengthening driven by sea surface temperature changes outside the tropics. Nature Geoscience. doi:10.1038/s41561-024-01510-5
- Wang, H., Zheng, X.-T., Cai, W., Han, Z.-W., Xie, S.-P., Kang, S., Geng, Y.-F., Liu, F., Wang, C.-Y., Wu, Y., Xiang, B. & Zhou, L. (2024). Atmosphere teleconnections from abatement of China aerosol emissions exacerbate Northeast Pacific warm blob events. PNAS, 121: e2313797121. doi:10.1073/pnas.231379712 [publisher-version]
- Watanabe, M., Kang, S., Collins, M., Hwang, Y.-T., McGregor, S. & Stuecker, M. (2024). Possible shift in controls of the tropical Pacific surface warming pattern. Nature, 630, 315-324. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07452-7
- Watanabe, M., Kang, S., Collins, M., Hwang, Y.-T., McGregor, S. & Stuecker, M. (2024). Author Correction: Possible shift in controls of the tropical Pacific surface warming pattern. Nature. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-08060-1
- Wu, Y., Zheng, X.-T., Wang, H., Liu, F., Kang, S. & Zhou, L. (2024). Long-term changes in salinity in the South China Sea due to anthropogenic forcing. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. doi:10.1029/2024JC020888
- Xu, Z., Kosaka, Y., Toda, M., Iwakiri, T., Huang, G., Ji, F., Miyamoto, A. & Tao, W. (2024). Irreversibility of winter precipitation over the Northeastern Pacific and Western North America against CO2 forcing. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 7(1): 300. doi:10.1038/s41612-024-00864-2 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Kang, S., Yu, Y., Deser, C., Zhang, X., Kang, I.-S., Lee, S.-S., Rodgers, K. & Ceppi, P. (2023). Global impacts of recent Southern Ocean cooling. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120: e2300881120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2300881120 [publisher-version][supplementary-material]
- Kang, S., Ceppi, P., Yu, Y. & Kang, I.-S. (2023). Recent global climate feedback controlled by Southern Ocean cooling. Nature Geoscience, 16, 775-780. doi:10.1038/s41561-023-01256-6 [publisher-version]
- Rugenstein, M., Dhame, S., Olonscheck, D., Wills, R., Watanabe, M. & Seager, R. (2023). Connecting the SST pattern problem and the hot model problem. Geophysical Research Letters, 50: e2023GL105488. doi:10.1029/2023GL105488 [publisher-version]
- Watanabe, M., Iwakiri, T., Dong, Y. & Kang, S. (2023). Two competing drivers of the recent Walker circulation trend. Geophysical Research Letters, 50: e2023GL105332. doi:10.1029/2023GL105332 [publisher-version]
- Xiang, B., Xie, S.-P., Kang, S. & Kramer, R. (2023). An emerging Asian aerosol dipole pattern reshapes the Asian summer monsoon and exacerbates northern hemisphere warming. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science: 77. doi:10.1038/s41612-023-00400-8 [publisher-version]
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