It has been a busy and productive spring for the graduate students in the group. Of particulate note, Ibuki, Hannah, and Aandishah have all published their first papers. Hannah and Ibuki published a nice pair of papers that looked at the robustness of observed strengthening trends in the tropical Pacific sea surface temperature gradient. Ibuki's paper was recently accepted and performs a series of null hypothesis tests on trends in the gradient over the observational record. She shows that the trends are robust against a series of progressively more conservative statistical null hypotheses, as well as outside the range of internal variability generated from several simple geophysical models. Hannah's work complemented Ibuki's findings by showing that the majority of the trends in the observational data are outside the range of what fully-coupled climate models generate. Moreover, most of the models simulate weakening trends, as opposed to the strengthening trends estimated in the observations. Both of these papers test trends across all possible lenths of 20 years or longer over all possible periods in the observational record (we love triangle plots!), thus greatly expanding the robustness with which they have been tested and evaluated.
Aandishah's paper performs a global assessment of dryness and wetness conditions using an ensemble of observational, satellite-informed, and reanalysis-based soil moisture datasets and drought indices. She found that the 2021–2023 period marks the longest consecutive stretch of extreme drought conditions globally since the early 20th century. The global patterns of droughts over 2021–2023 align with long-term drying trends, consistent with the broader influence of anthropogenic climate change on global hydroclimate.
Congrats to Ibuki, Hannah, and Aandishah!
And in the honorable mention category, Shane also passed his oral qualifying exam this spring. Congrats Shane!