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On October 17, Alex Gonzalez gave an invited talk at a symposium at UCLA in honor of the late Professor Akio Arakawa: Modeling Convection, Clouds and Climate Systems. Alex’s talk was entitled, “Wind-Evaporation-SST feedbacks and the southeast Pacific Ocean ITCZ.” The recorded presentation can be seen below.  

During July 2022, Alex Gonzalez and Indrani Ganguly (and the DIYnamics team) co-convened a session at the eighth annual Earth Educators’ Rendezvous in Minneapolis, MN this July entitled, “Teaching atmosphere, ocean, and planetary fluid dynamic fundamentals vividly with rotating tanks.” (https://serc.carleton.edu/earth_rendezvous/2022/program/morning_workshops/w9/index.html). There were approximately 25 participants in their session, with 5–10 from underrepresented groups/minority serving…

Alex started a new position as an Assistant Scientist in the Department of Physical Oceanography at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in June 2022. Alex remains Affiliate Faculty at Iowa State University. With this transition, the Tropical Atmospheric Dynamics Group at ISU becomes the Tropical Climate Dynamics Group at WHOI.

Indrani presented her research entitled “Role of near-surface dynamics and air-sea interactions in subseasonal ITCZ variability over the East Pacific” at the 23rd AOFD conference held in Colorado.

On May 20, 2022, Alex Gonzalez, Indrani Ganguly, Fouzia Fahrin, and undergraduate ISU meteorology student, Jesse Castillo, visited Urbandale High School to discuss weather and climate with approximately 150 students across four different chemistry, environmental science, and physical science classes. The group led a series of short presentations on recent impactful weather and climate events…

In early January, Alex Gonzalez, Indrani Ganguly, and James Larson published a journal article in the Journal of Climate on the daily to weekly evolution of low-level winds and convergence prior to the intensification of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) over the east Pacific Ocean using observational and reanalysis data sets: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/35/4/JCLI-D-21-0216.1.xml. The study focused…

The Tropical Atmospheric Dynamics Group welcomes new graduate students, Fouzia Fahrin and Travis Enzensperger. They both will be researching the east Pacific ITCZ and its associated climate model biases as a part of their Ph.D. and M.S. theses, respectively.

We welcome Urbandale High School Chemistry and Physical Sciences teacher, Katherine Hanson, to our research group for Summer 2021. Katherine will work on studying east Pacific ITCZ events that occurred from 2013 to 2019 in NASA observational and reanalysis data for northern ITCZs, southern ITCZs, and double ITCZs. Katherine is supported by one of Alex’s…

Alex presented research entitled, “Interacciones de la dinámica y propagación de OMJ en simulaciones de modelos climáticos,” as a part of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at UNAM México City Virtual Seminar Series (Ciencias Atmosféricas Para Quedarse En Casa). More info and seminar recording.

We welcome undergraduate student, Marissa Osterloh, to our research group for Summer 2021. Marissa will work on studying east Pacific ITCZ events that occurred during 1998 to 2012 in ECMWF and NASA observational and reanalysis data for northern ITCZs, southern ITCZs, and double ITCZs.