Explanipedia

A worldwide climatology of extreme air masses Open

J. M. Ryan, Ben Kravitz, Travis O’Brien, Scott M. Robeson, Paul W. Staten · 2025

Extreme temperature events are among the most damaging weather phenomena. In a warming world, more heat extremes and fewer cold extremes are expected in most regions in the future, a trade-off that warrants further understanding of such ev…

Tropical Tropopause Layer Evolution During QBO Disruptions Open

Lan Luan, Paul W. Staten, William J. Randel, Ying‐Hwa Kuo · 2025

The tropical tropopause layer (TTL) is studied during 2015/16 and 2019/20 quasi‐biennial oscillation (QBO) disruption events using GNSS‐RO and SWOOSH satellite observations and the ERA5 reanalysis. By compositing temperature, water vapor, …

Regional and Temporal Variability of Atmospheric River Seasonality: Influences of Detection Algorithms and Moisture Transport Dynamics Open

Diya Kamnani, Travis O’Brien, Samuel Smith, Paul W. Staten, Christine A. Shields · 2025

Understanding the regional and temporal variability of atmospheric river (AR) seasonality is crucial for preparedness and mitigation of extreme events. While ARs were thought to peak in winter, recent research shows they exhibit region‐spe…

The Subseasonal North Atlantic Oscillation is a Quasi-Semiannual, Propagating Disturbance Open

Samuel Smith, Jian Lu, Paul W. Staten · 2025

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a well-studied mode of regional climate variability, associated with fluctuations in sea-level pressure (SLP), storm tracks, and the North Atlantic jet. These fluctuations have been perceived as a se…

Precursors to Extreme Wintertime Cold in the Midwest United States Open

J. M. Ryan, Ben Kravitz, Scott M. Robeson, Paul W. Staten · 2025

Cold air outbreaks (CAOs) are extreme weather events that affect millions of people every winter, including those in the US Midwest. Per our criteria (a sufficiently cold event over a wide area and a long period), we identified 43 winterti…

Seasonality of Atmospheric River Frequency Depends on Location, Year, and Detection Algorithm Open

Diya Kamnani, Travis O’Brien, Samuel Smith, Paul W. Staten, Christine A. Shields · 2024

Seasonality of Atmospheric River Frequency Depends on Location, Year, and Detection Algorithm Open

Diya Kamnani, Travis O’Brien, Samuel Smith, Paul W. Staten, Christine A. Shields · 2024

Understanding the regional and temporal variability of atmospheric river (AR) seasonality is crucial for preparedness and mitigation of extreme events. Previously thought to peak mainly in winter, recent research reveals that ARs exhibit r…

Diabatic Eddy Forcing Increases Persistence and Opposes Propagation of the Southern Annular Mode in MERRA-2 Open

Samuel Smith, Jian Lu, Paul W. Staten · 2024

As a dominant mode of jet variability on subseasonal time scales, the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) provides a window into how the atmosphere can produce internal oscillations on longer-than-synoptic time scales. While SAM’s existence can be…

What controls the interannual variation of Hadley cell extent in the Northern Hemisphere: physical mechanism and empirical model for edge variation Open

Kyong‐Hwan Seo, S.Y. Yoon, Jian Lu, Yongyun Hu, Paul W. Staten , et al. · 2023

The Hadley circulation is the most prominent atmospheric meridional circulation, reducing the radiatively driven equator-to-pole temperature gradient. While the Hadley cell extent varies by several degrees from year to year, the detailed d…

Hemispherically asymmetric Hadley cell response to CO <sub>2</sub> removal Open

Seo-Yeon Kim, Yeong-Ju Choi, Seok‐Woo Son, Kevin M. Grise, Paul W. Staten , et al. · 2023

A poleward shift of the Hadley cell (HC) edge in a warming climate, which contributes to the expansion of drought-prone subtropical regions, has been widely documented. The question addressed here is whether this shift is reversible with C…

Atlantic Multidecadal Variability modulates the climate impacts of El Niño–Southern Oscillation in Australia Open

Paloma Trascasa‐Castro, Amanda C. Maycock, Yohan Ruprich‐Robert, Marco Turco, Paul W. Staten · 2023

Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV) modulates El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) dynamics. Here, we explore the effect of warm (AMV+) and cold (AMV−) AMV conditions on the austral summer teleconnection of ENSO to Australia using ideal…

Composite Analysis and Clustering of Patterns Prior to Extreme Wintertime Cold in the Midwest United States Open

James Ryan, Ben Kravitz, Travis O’Brien, Paul W. Staten, Scott M. Robeson · 2023

This is code for the analysis in "Composite Analysis and Clustering of Patterns Prior to Extreme Wintertime Cold in the Midwest United States." This zip folder contains both scripts and matrices, all of which are in MATLAB 2022a. This has …

A convection‐permitting dynamically downscaled dataset over the Midwestern United States Open

Abraham Lauer, Jesse Devaney, Chanh Kieu, Ben Kravitz, Travis O’Brien , et al. · 2023

Climate change is expected to have far‐reaching effects at both the global and regional scale, but local effects are difficult to determine from coarse‐resolution climate studies. Dynamical downscaling can provide insight into future clima…

Data for paper "Hemispherically asymmetric Hadley-cell response to CO2 removal" Open

Seoyeon Kim, Yeong-Ju Choi, Seok‐Woo Son, Kevin M. Grise, Paul W. Staten , et al. · 2023

Data for paper "Hemispherically asymmetric Hadley-cell response to CO2 removal"

Changes in Hadley circulation and intertropical convergence zone under strategic stratospheric aerosol geoengineering Open

Wei Cheng, Douglas G. MacMartin, Ben Kravitz, Daniele Visioni, Ewa Bednarz , et al. · 2022

Tropical tropopause layer structure during QBO disruptions and the roles of waves Open

Lan Luan, Paul W. Staten, William J. Randel, Ying-Hwa Kuo · 2022

<p>The tropical tropopause layer (TTL) is an important region where air enters from the tropical troposphere to the stratosphere. The cold point tropopause (CPT) within the TTL determines how much water vapor can enter the tropical s…

How Moist and Dry Intrusions Control the Local Hydrologic Cycle in Present and Future Climates Open

Samuel Smith, Paul W. Staten, Jian Lu · 2021

Models disagree on how much the hydrologic cycle could intensify under climate change. These changes are expected to scale with the Clausius–Clapeyron relation but may locally diverge due in part to the uncertain response of the general ci…

Editorial “The Impacts of Climate Change on Atmospheric Circulations” Open

Paul W. Staten, Muyin Wang, Yutian Wu · 2020

Understanding the atmospheric general circulation is, in a way, analogous to cleaning a large home [...]

Improved Detection of Interannual Cloud Variability over the Southern Hemisphere Using Legacy Satellites Open

Shay Liu, Paul W. Staten, Brian H. Kahn · 2020

Shifts in deep tropical convection and midlatitude jet streams both manifest themselves in high cloud anomalies. Such anomalies may play a significant role in local to global climate processes. This work investigates how high cloud propert…

Radioisotopes demonstrate changes in global atmospheric circulation possibly caused by global warming Open

Lucrezia Terzi, Gerhard Wotawa, Michael Schoeppner, Martin Kalinowski, Paul R. J. Saey , et al. · 2020

OUTLOOKS Open

Paul W. Staten, Devon E. Colcord, Samuel Smith, Lan Luan, Shay Liu , et al. · 2020

Tropical expansion is a rich topic, both theoretically and practically.I am interested in exploring further how much we can apply existing Hadley cell models to understand regional changes, and how such regional changes contribute to hydro…

Causes and Impacts of Tropical Widening Open

Paul W. Staten, Kevin M. Grise, Sean Davis, Kristopher B. Karnauskas, Darryn W. Waugh , et al. · 2020

A new comparative scale between tropopause height and beryllium 7 and the weight of quasi-biennial oscillation (QBO) effect. Open

Lucrezia Terzi, Gerhard Wotawa, Paul W. Staten, Lan Luan, Axel Gabriel , et al. · 2020

<p>Recent studies demonstrated how accurate beryllium 7 can be used as proxy to predict seasonal weather, in particular Indian monsoons, climate change patterns such as tropopause height changes, tropopause breathing and Jet Stream s…

Tropical Widening: From Global Variations to Regional Impacts Open

Paul W. Staten, Kevin M. Grise, Sean Davis, Kristopher B. Karnauskas, Darryn W. Waugh , et al. · 2020

Over the past 15 years, numerous studies have suggested that the sinking branches of Earth’s Hadley circulation and the associated subtropical dry zones have shifted poleward over the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. …

Regional Widening of Tropical Overturning: Forced Change, Natural Variability, and Recent Trends Open

Paul W. Staten, Kevin M. Grise, Sean Davis, Kristopher B. Karnauskas, Nicholas Davis · 2019

The width of the tropical Hadley circulation (HC) has garnered intense interest in recent decades, owing to the emerging evidence for its expansion in observations and models and to the anticipated impacts on surface climate in its descend…

Recent Tropical Expansion: Natural Variability or Forced Response? Open

Kevin M. Grise, Sean Davis, Isla R. Simpson, Darryn W. Waugh, Qiang Fu , et al. · 2018

Previous studies have documented a poleward shift in the subsiding branches of Earth’s Hadley circulation since 1979 but have disagreed on the causes of these observed changes and the ability of global climate models to capture them. This …

The TropD software package (v1): standardized methods for calculating tropical-width diagnostics Open

Ori Adam, Kevin M. Grise, Paul W. Staten, Isla R. Simpson, Sean Davis , et al. · 2018

Observational and modeling studies suggest that Earth's tropical belt has widened over the late 20th century and will continue to widen throughout the 21st century. Yet, estimates of tropical-width variations differ significantly across st…

Author Correction: Re-examining tropical expansion Open

Paul W. Staten, Jian Lu, Kevin M. Grise, Sean Davis, Thomas Birner · 2018

Revisiting the Relationship among Metrics of Tropical Expansion Open

Darryn W. Waugh, Kevin M. Grise, William J. M. Seviour, Sean Davis, Nicholas Davis , et al. · 2018

There is mounting evidence that the width of the tropics has increased over the last few decades, but there are large differences in reported expansion rates. This is, likely, in part due to the wide variety of metrics that have been used …

The TropD software package: Standardized methods for calculatingTropical Width Diagnostics Open

Ori Adam, Kevin M. Grise, Paul W. Staten, Isla R. Simpson, Sean Davis , et al. · 2018

Observational and modeling studies suggest that Earth's tropical belt has widened over the late 20th century and will continue to widen throughout the 21st century. Yet estimates of tropical width variations differ significantly across stu…

Paul W. Staten YOU? Author Swipe