News
On 6 August, Zenon Davidson presented his Summer Student Fellowship research on clouds and air-sea interaction at the WHOI visiting student poster session, entitled, “Autonomous Characterization of Marine Clouds from Ship-Based All-Sky Imagery: Cloud Radiative Effects during the South Asian Summer Monsoon.” Congrats, Zenon!
On 8 August, a proposal submitted by Alex G., Alex K., and James Edson (WHOI, Applied Ocean Engineering and Physics) was funded by WHOI’s Access to the Sea Program, from September 2026–August 2028. The project will focus on observing marine fog in coastal Martha’s Vineyard via existing air-sea instrumentation, new cloud instrumentation, and weather balloons…
On 2 July, Fouzia successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation at Iowa State University entitled, “What Shapes Tropical Rainfall over the East Pacific? Insights from Low Clouds and Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves.” A big congrats to Fouzia!
On 24 June, Fouzia orally presented her research at the Joint MPAS/WRF Users Workshop 2026 entitled, “Assessing kilometer‐scale MPAS‐A performance in representing the East Pacific ITCZ and convectively coupled equatorial waves.” More information: https://www.mmm.ucar.edu/events/133496/agenda. Video recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC2L5mi7r7A.
On 2 June, Alex G hosted the WHOI’s Department of Physical Oceanography weekly seminar entitled, “Vertical momentum mixing in the atmospheric boundary layer and its role in tropical Pacific Ocean winds and rainfall.” Abstract: Earth system models have severe rainfall biases over the tropical Pacific Ocean, with a zonal rainfall band in the Southern Hemisphere…
On 26 May, Zenon Davidson arrived at WHOI, as a part of the WHOI Summer Student Fellowship, where he will research the relationship between clouds and surface radiative fluxes during the South Asian Monsoon using field campaign data (description below). Zenon is a rising senior undergraduate student majoring in Geophysics at the University of British…
On 20 May, a proposal submitted by Alex G., Alex K., and colleague Kuniaki Inoue (Columbia University) on high-resolution interactions between tropical rainfall and low cloud decks using NASA TROPICS mission data was funded. The grant begins in July and goes through June 2029. Congrats to everyone!
On 14 April, Fouzia’s paper on the fidelity of tropical low clouds in atmospheric reanalyses was published in JGR-Atmospheres: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2025JD044949. Congrats, Fouzia!
From 30 March through 2 April, Fouzia and Alex G attended American Meteorological Society’s 37th Conference on Hurricanes and Tropical Meteorology in La Jolla, CA. Fouzia presented her Ph.D. modeling research on the ITCZ and tropical waves entitled, “Improving the Representation of the East Pacific ITCZ and Convectively Coupled Equatorial Waves In Km-Scale Simulations Using…
On 1 April, ULCA colleague and fellow Do-It-Yourself Dynamics (DIYnamics) team member, Jonathan Aurnou, published an article with Alex G. and other the DIYnamics team members on simulating atmospheric rivers with affordable rotating tank systems in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/107/4/BAMS-D-24-0011.1.xml. Congrats to Jon, Alex, and the rest of the DIYnamics team!
On 27 February, former group member (and now Assistant Professor at Northeastern University) Chengfei He’s paper was published in Nature Communications entitled, “Climate models exaggerate greenhouse gas impact on recent interhemispheric temperature patterns and tropical climate.” Congrats, Chengfei!
On 18 February, Chelone Laws’ poster presentation at the AMS Annual Meeting won a 2nd place student presentation prize. Congrats, Chelone!
On 26–30 January, everyone in the Tropical Climate Dynamics research group – Alex G., Fouzia, Chelone, and Alex K. presented their research at the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting in Houston, TX. Alex G. orally presented results from his recently published paper on the double ITCZ bias entitled, “We need to simulate more northern ITCZs and…
On January 14th, Alex traveled to Dallas, TX to present his research at a WHOI Dallas Chapter event. The title of his talk was, “How oceanic clouds shape our weather”. He spoke about his research on tropical rainfall and clouds and how moisture originating from the tropical east Pacific Ocean and the Gulf/Atlantic Ocean impacted…
On January 13th, Alex was selected to become the next co-chair of the U.S. CLIVAR Process Study and Model Improvement Panel. Alex will serve a two-year term beginning in March 2026. Congrats, Alex!
On December 17th, Alex G, Fouzia, Alex K, and Indrani all co-authored a paper entitled, “We Need to Simulate More Northern ITCZs and Less Southern ITCZs Over the East Pacific Ocean in Coupled Climate Models” in the Journal of Geophphysical Research: Atmospheres: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025JD043650.
On December 14th, Chelone traveled to New Orleans, LA to attend the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting to present her WHOI SSF and NSF SOARS summer research entitled, “The Effect of Upper Ocean Freshwater on the Rapid Intensification of Hurricane Lee.”
On December 2nd, Alex hosted the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences Seminar at Boston College. The title of his talk was, “Unraveling the Building Blocks of Inaccurate Rainfall Predictions over the Tropical Pacific Ocean.”
On 14 November, Alex K.’s WHOI Innovative Technology Program proposal was funded. Congrats, Alex!
On 14 November, Alex G. was selected to serve a two-year term as a committee member of the WHOI Summer Student Fellowship Program for the Department of Physical Oceanography. Congrats, Alex!