Abstract
Under greenhouse warming, majority of latest climate models project a weakening in the Walker Circulation and an increase in sea surface temperature (SST) variability associated with extreme of El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), amid warming background SSTs. Model simulation of the 20th century suggests that ENSO has increased by greenhouse warming. The projected changes have important implications. In this presentation I will discuss the impacts on tropical-extratropical interactions, variability of tropical North Atlantic SST, extreme subtropical high events, and Southern Ocean warming, Antarctic ice shelf, and global economic growth.
Bio
Dr. Wenju Cai was a CSIRO Chief Research Scientist, and now a Scientist at Laoshan Laboratory. His interest spans from dynamics, mechanism and impact of climate variability in the tropics (such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole), and in the Southern Ocean, through to climate change detection and attribution, and to impacts of individual forcing factors of increasing carbon dioxide, increasing anthropogenic aerosols, and stratospheric ozone depletion in observed changes and future climate projection. He specializes in conceptual nonlinear frameworks for strong El Niño, La Niña, and the Indian Ocean Dipole, uncovering their nonlinear dynamics, global impact and their change under global warming. His service to scientific communities includes contributing authorship to IPCC reports, co-Chair of World Climate Research Programme CLIVAR Pacific Panel during 2009 – 2015, a member of the CLIVAR Scientific Steering Group (2016-2018) and its co-Chair (2019-ongoing). He is a Fellow of Australia Academy of Science, Fellow of American Meteorological Society, and Fellow of American Geophysical Union.
