Colloquium Series: "The Pacific Decadal Precession: What is it, how does it work, and why do we care?"

Date: 

Monday, February 10, 2020, 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location: 

Haller Hall (GM 102)

Speaker: Prof. Bruce Anderson (Boston University)

Abstract: Events of recent years highlight the profound impact of decadal-scale climate shifts upon physical, biological and socioeconomic systems. Previously, research to understand, anticipate, and prepare for the regional effects that accompany decadal-scale climate shifts invoked well-known modes of decadal climate variability and change—e.g., the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO). Here we will discuss the sources and physical processes giving rise to a recently revealed mode of decadal climate variability termed the Pacific Decadal Precession (PDP), a ~10-year counter-clockwise progression of an atmospheric pressure dipole around the North Pacific. During its progression, the PDP has teleconnected links to multiple climate extremes including: sustained droughts across the western and central US; enhanced fire severity in Alaska and California; the propensity for more frequent cold extremes over the eastern US; and the formation and persistence of prolonged marine heatwaves in the Northeast Pacific. Further, it has signatures that extend from the tropical Pacific subsurface through to the Arctic stratosphere. In this talk we will briefly introduce how this mode of variability was revealed.  We will then analyze and diagnose the underlying phenomena and processes that sustain the PDP’s unique evolution. Finally, we will characterize the PDP’s local and teleconnected interactions with, and impacts on, multiple earth system components, including atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial systems.  Overall, we argue that given the PDP's wide-ranging influence on North Pacific decadal climate variability, a better understanding of the physical processes giving rise to the PDP’s evolution will provide valuable information to many communities and allow them to anticipate and prepare for the social, economic, and environmental impacts of its decadal- and regional-scale climate effects.

Short bio: Bruce T. Anderson is a Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University and is a recognized expert on global and regional climate variability and change. In addition, Prof. Anderson actively works with the public sector on issues related to climate variability and change, recently serving as a member of the Boston Research Advisory Group (BRAG) for the city of Boston, which is looking at the risks the city faces from sea level rise and storms in the coming decades. He also has served as a Research Consultant for the Union of Concerned Scientist’s Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA) project, an expert advisor for the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment for Cambridge, MA, and a contributing author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report. He was one of the inaugural Grantham Institute for Climate Change Visiting Fellows at Imperial College for Science, Technology and Medicine and has also been a Royal Society Visiting Scientist, National Research Council Fellow and a NOAA Visiting Scientist Fellow. Prof. Anderson has more than 75 peer-reviewed articles published or in press and has been an invited speaker at both national and international universities, conferences, and workshops. Prof. Anderson is also the lead author (with Prof. Alan Strahler, BU) of an introductory undergraduate textbook on Weather and Climate, published jointly by John Wiley & Sons and the National Geographic Society (2008). His research interests include regional impacts of climate variability; large-scale and regional atmospheric dynamics and hydrology; historic and future climate trends within observations and climate models; and coupled ocean-atmosphere interactions and feedbacks. He received his Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1998 and graduated with a B.S. in Physics from University of California, Santa Barbara in 1994.