The University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa continues to solidify its status as a leading research institution, ranking No. 92 among the top 660 research universities in the U.S. and No. 68 among the top 420 public universities. This is according to the latest , which measures research and development (R&D) expenditures across various disciplines and serves as the primary source for R&D data in U.S. higher education.

• Related UH News story: UH Mānoa among nation’s best in latest research rankings, February 5, 2024

Top-performing disciplines

UH Mānoa demonstrated research excellence across a range of critical fields, with several disciplines maintaining their place in the top 10% nationally for fiscal year (FY) 2023:

• Ocean sciences and marine sciences: No. 7 out of 414 (top 2%)
• Astronomy and astrophysics: No. 15 out of 517 (top 3%)
• Geological and earth sciences: No. 13 out of 414 (top 3%)
• Computer and information sciences: No. 39 out of 500 (top 8%)
• Communication and communications technologies: No. 37 out of 474 (top 8%, ranked in top 10% for the first time)
• Atmospheric science and meteorology: No. 41 out of 414 (top 10%)

UH Mānoa also excelled in agricultural sciences (No. 40 out of 343, top 12%) and electrical, electronic, and communications engineering (No. 49 out of 403, top 12%).

“Our continued presence among the nation’s top research universities reaffirms the strength and consistency of our research programs at UH Mānoa,” said Interim Vice Provost for Research and Scholarship Christopher Sabine. “These rankings are a testament to our faculty and researchers and proof of our commitment to innovative research and scholarship to address challenges here in �鶹��ý and beyond.”

Examples of UH Mānoa projects that attracted significant funding, include:

• The �鶹��ý Ocean Time-series (HOT) established in 1988 that studies climate and environmental changes in the North Pacific. After nearly 350 expeditions to the exact same location north of �鶹��ý dubbed station ALOHA, the 35-year time-series record is still going strong. Read more on UH News.
• A UH telescope on Maunakea that will support NASA’s $19.5 million Landolt Space Mission by helping calibrate telescopes with an artificial “star” satellite and creating new star brightness catalogs. Read more on UH News.
• Earth scientists studying the chemical evolution of the Hawaiian hotspot and Kīlauea’s volcanic cycles, revealing the submarine Hawaiian volcano Kamaʻehuakanaloa has erupted at least five times in the last 150 years. Read more on UH News.

Record-breaking extramural funding

UH Mānoa received a record $464.9 million in extramural awards in fiscal year 2023-2024, leading the way in the UH 10-campus system’s record-breaking $615.7 million that fiscal year, surpassing the previous year’s record by $99.8 million.

Extramural funding, which comes from external sources, mainly the federal government, supports research and training initiatives by university faculty and staff. This marks the third consecutive year UH has exceeded half a billion dollars in funding.

National research trends

The HERD survey revealed an 11.2% increase in national academic R&D spending in FY 2023, the largest growth rate in two decades. Total U.S. academic R&D expenditures reached $108.8 billion, a $11.0 billion increase from FY 2022.

“UH Mānoa’s performance aligns with this upward trend, further emphasizing its role as a key contributor to the national research landscape,” said UH Mānoa Provost Michael Bruno.

In a significant development for climate research and management, the �鶹��ý Climate Data Portal (HCDP) is set to expand its reach to additional Pacific islands, and provide more data to help decisionmakers. Launched in 2022, the free online portal developed by researchers from the University of �鶹��ý and the East-West Center is expected to catalyze new research initiatives and inform policy decisions to mitigate climate risks and safeguard natural and human systems.

A major enhancement to the HCDP is the integration of data from the �鶹��ý Mesonet, which plans to establish 100 new climate stations across the state over the next two years. Similar efforts are underway in American Samoa, and funding is being sought for a mesonet in Guam.

“The �鶹��ý Mesonet is filling critical gaps in our understanding of climate in �鶹��ý. Improving monitoring across the Pacific is a goal we are working towards, one station at a time,” said Tom Giambelluca, UH Water Resource Research Center director.

The HCDP‘s recent inclusion in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society underscores its importance in streamlining access to climate information. The HCDP team plans to leverage decades of work developing the portal and expand its utility and function to serve other regions in the Pacific.

User friendly, comprehensive datasets

The user-friendly interface and comprehensive datasets make the HCDP an invaluable resource for improving awareness and facilitating collaboration across sectors. Recent updates feature new gridded surfaces, such as seasonal land cover and daily rainfall and humidity maps.

“Accessing high-quality climate data for �鶹��ý has never been easier,” said Ryan Longman, East-West Center Oceania researcher. “This means greater opportunities for research, community outreach, and developing decision support tools to aid resource managers.”

Federal agencies increasingly leverage HCDP data for various applications:

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture Risk Management Agency uses the data for an insurance product for ranchers in �鶹��ý.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration produces a monthly state-of-climate report.
• The U.S. Geological Survey develops models to track avian malaria using HCDP‘s gridded products.

Since its launch on March 3, 2022, more than 45,000 unique users have accessed more than 20 million HCDP files. Upcoming developments include mapping hourly wind speed and solar radiation and creating tools for wildfire risk assessment and drought forecasting.

The Regents’ Medal for Excellence in Research is awarded by the University of �鶹��ý Board of Regents in recognition of scholarly contributions that expand the boundaries of knowledge and enrich the lives of students and the community.

Benjamin Shappee

Benjamin Shappee is an astronomer at the Institute for Astronomy. He specializes in transients and time-domain astronomy. Shappee is a founding member of one of the most successful time-domain projects, the All-Sky Automated Survey for Super-Novae (ASAS–SN), which uses telescopes around the globe to survey the entire sky daily.

The ASAS–SN survey paper (Shappee et al. 2014) is the 50th most-cited paper in astronomy in the past decade. Shappee is co-principal investigator of the largest near-infrared supernova survey to date, the �鶹��ý Supernova Flows, using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope on Maunakea.

He and his group have made important contributions to our understanding of the origins of supernovae (exploding stars), stellar flares with potential impact on the habitability of nearby planets, and outbursts from supermassive black holes. ASAS–SN found the most luminous supernova yet discovered (ASASSN-15lh). Shappee was also part of the team that discovered the first and only counterpart to gravitational wave source from the merger of two neutron stars. He has authored 275 publications and has 20,000 citations.

Malte Stuecker

Malte Stuecker is an assistant professor in oceanography at the International Pacific Research Center in the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. Stuecker’s research is on climate variability and climate change in the past, present and future.

Much of his work is centered on the Pacific Ocean and phenomena such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Stuecker earned a PhD in meteorology from UH Mānoa in 2015. He returned to UH as faculty in 2020, and was previously an assistant project leader/research professor at the IBS Center for Climate Physics in South Korea.

Stuecker received the IAPSO Early Career Scientist Medal in Physical Oceanography in 2023, the Kamide Lecture Award from the AOGS Atmospheric Sciences section in 2020, and the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the EGU Climate: Past, Present & Future division in 2016. In 2018, he was a Future Leaders Program Fellow of the Science and Technology in Society forum in Kyoto (Japan), and in 2022 he received an NSF CAREER Award.

Donald Womack

Donald Reid Womack is a professor of music in the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa College of Arts, Languages & Letters. A faculty member at UH since 1994, Womack chairs the music department, and is faculty in Japanese and Korean Studies.

He is the composer of more than 100 original works, which have been performed and broadcast in 25 countries and recorded on more than a dozen releases in the U.S., Korea and Japan. Ensembles around the globe have performed his works, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, Russia Ulan Ude Symphony, Hawaii Symphony, National Orchestra of Korea, among many others.

Womack is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, two Fulbright Fellowships, two Artist Fellowships from the State of �鶹��ý, and won numerous other national and international competitions. Widely recognized as a leader in intercultural composition, he integrates East Asian and western instruments. He has lectured on his work in Korea, Taiwan and Japan, and taught as visiting faculty at Seoul National University.

The is No. 91 out of the top 633 research institutions in the U.S. and No. 59 out of the top 410 public universities, according to the latest , which measures research and development federal expenditures across a variety of disciplines.

The following disciplines at UH Mānoa placed in the nation’s top 10%, according to the latest available data from FY 2022:

• Ocean sciences and marine sciences: No. 7 out of 396 (top 2%)
• Astronomy and astrophysics: No. 13 out of 493 (top 3%)
• Geological and earth sciences: No. 15 out of 396 (top 4%)
• Computer and information sciences: No. 27 out of 484 (top 6%)
• Atmospheric science and meteorology: No. 41 out of 396 (top 10%)
• Social Work: No. 47 out of 460 (top 10%)

UH Mānoa is also in the top 11% in agricultural sciences (No. 38 out of 332) and electrical, electronic, and communications engineering (No. 43 out of 388).

“The data shows that in a highly competitive environment, the federal government recognizes the expertise here at UH Mānoa by funding our research across multiple disciplines,” UH Mānoa Provost Michael Bruno said. “It underscores our continued success in fostering a dynamic research environment, attracting top-tier faculty and students, and further establishing ourselves as a hub for cutting-edge research to serve the people of �鶹��ý and the world.”

UH Mānoa is a global leader in a wide range of disciplines, including earth and environmental sciences, sustainability, climate, food systems and the health sciences. Several examples of UH Mānoa projects that attracted the attention of funders:

• In 1988, the �鶹��ý Ocean Time-series (HOT) was established with support from the National Science Foundation to study changes in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. After nearly 350 expeditions to station ALOHA, the 35-year time-series record is still going strong. Read more about the HOT program on UH News.
• A UH Mānoa student-led team was selected to develop a small research satellite for the NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative planned to launch between 2024–27. Read more about the project.
• Kamaʻehuakanaloa (formerly ��ōʻ���� Seamount), a submarine Hawaiian volcano located about 20 miles off the south coast of �鶹��ý Island, has erupted at least five times in the last 150 years, according to new research led by Earth scientists at UH ����ԴDz�. Read more about this research.

“This achievement is a testament to the unwavering dedication of our faculty, staff and students who continue to elevate UH Mānoa as a beacon of excellence, propelling �鶹��ý to the forefront of cutting-edge research and innovation,” UH Mānoa Interim Vice Provost for Research and Scholarship Christopher Sabine said. “The entire state should take pride in our collective commitment to advancing knowledge and contributing to the broader scientific community.”

Record extramural funding

UH brought in a record high of $515.9 million for FY 2023 in extramural funding, $10.9 million more than the previous record of $505 million set in FY 2022. UH Mānoa, the flagship campus of UH’s 10 campus system, led the extramural funding amount with $342.7 million.

Extramural funding is external investments from entities such as the federal government, industry and non-profit organizations that support research and training activities conducted by university faculty and staff. Extramural projects support research and innovation that help to increase knowledge and provide solutions to improve quality of life.

UH Mānoa, the flagship campus of the UH 10-campus system is classified as one of only 146 R1 research universities in the nation by the Carnegie Foundation, indicating “very high research activity.”

The earned international recognition for academic and research excellence overall and in multiple subject areas, including a top 60 showing worldwide in meteorology, atmospheric sciences and geosciences, according to the released on October 25 by U.S. News and World Report.

UH’s flagship campus is ranked No. 394 worldwide out of the top 2,000 universities from 95 countries, selected from more than 26,000 institutions worldwide. The rankings are based on several factors, including global and regional research reputation, publications, citations and international collaboration. UH Mānoa was also ranked No. 106 overall in the U.S, No. 117 in regional research reputation, No. 129 in international collaboration in the U.S. and No. 267 in global research reputation.

According to U.S. News and World Report, UH Mānoa is highly ranked internationally in several subject areas, including No. 40 in meteorology and atmospheric sciences, No. 60 in geosciences, No. 116 in arts and humanities, No. 119 in space science, No. 179 in plant and animal science, No. 198 in environment/ecology, and No. 250 in social sciences and public health.

Other rankings

Here are UH Mānoa’s latest notable rankings:

• 2023 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, October 11, 2022
• U.S. News and World Report 2022–23 Best Colleges, September 11, 2022
• 2022 Academic Ranking of World Universities by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, August 16, 2022

For more information, visit the .

—By Marc Arakaki

Weather experts from the (SOEST) at the shared their knowledge with the public as communities across the state awaited Hurricane Lane’s arrival.

Several faculty in the SOEST have expertise in hurricanes, and tropical and island meteorology.

Assistant Professor was interviewed by the New York Times, and was on-air with KHON2‘s weather anchor for nearly six hours on Friday. She updated viewers on the approaching hurricane/storm, answered questions from the public and interpreted hurricane graphics in layman’s terms.

“The most exciting part was when the storm fell apart in front of our eyes on live TV,” said Nugent. “We could see the upper level clouds being sheared toward the northeast and the lower level clouds beginning to move westward as Hurricane Lane took a turn to the left.”

, professor and chair of the department, was also highly sought after as a media commentator. He discussed whether Maunakea and Mauna Loa on �鶹��ý Island “protect” the islands from storms.

The discussion centered around the influence of environmental winds on the track and wind shear on the intensity of the storm. In particular, as the storm weakened through the action of wind shear as it neared Oʻahu, its depth became shallower, and the low level flow from the northeast took over in steering the storm to the west.

Assistant professor , professor , assistant professor , and �鶹��ý Sea Grant faculty were also interviewed by several media outlets. They shared various tools and webpages for the general public to follow the storm; explanations of how Lane was progressing; and how to prepare homes based on the .

“Even though we dodged a bullet from Lane, the hurricane season is not over until the end of November,” said Chu. “We still have to be vigilant about future storms.”

Watch some of the UH experts

• , KHON
• , KHON

—By Marcie Grabowski

Aiming to improve severe weather forecasting and warning lead-times associated with front range thunderstorms over northeastern Colorado, the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa����(SOEST) and have expanded their partnership.

Improvements in Colorado’s thunderstorm forecasting rely on innovative data from its Lightning Mapping Array (LMA) network. The network is comprised of 12 stations north of Denver that monitor lightning activity. LMA sensors have revealed distinct tornado signatures 30 minutes prior to the formation of a tornado and are used to predict severe storms that also produce strong straight-line winds and large hail.

The southernmost LMA sensor is currently located 25 miles north of Denver. The new gift will enable the construction and installation of six additional sensor stations around and south of Denver, expanding the LMA network to cover the Denver Metro Area and improve severe weather forecasting for the most densely-populated area of Colorado.

“Not only will this project allow us to provide better information to the Colorado community about incoming and potential severe thunderstorms,” said Professor , chair of the in SOEST and project lead, “but it will allow scientists to study and refine relationships between lightning information and the tornadic potential of thunderstorms. It will allow us to better predict dangerous storms and improve lead-times for tornado warnings, which has the potential to save lives.”

Two new sensors will be installed this year and four additional sensors will be installed over the next two years.

Partnership also expanding tropical cyclone research

In addition to the new LMA collaboration, the Jonathan Merage Foundation has funded another year of investigation into long-range lightning data.��The project is funding a postdoctoral student in Businger’s lab.

“Last year we developed a tropical storm model that can assimilate lightning data,” said Businger. “This year we aim to improve the way cloud processes are handled in the model and run some case studies, such as Hurricane Patricia and Typhoon Haiyan, through the model. This year will get us closer to our goal of improving our ability to predict the track and intensity of tropical cyclones.”

Both projects are currently underway.

—By Marcie Grabowski

No matter where you live, rain seems to fall more often at certain times of day, whether it is seen in the daily afternoon rainstorm or a typical overnight shower. Indeed, statistically, long-term average rainfall tends to cluster at certain times of the 24-hour cycle, but that time frame varies depending on location.

A team of scientists led by postdoctoral researcher Takatoshi Sakazaki, from the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa’s (IPRC), has analyzed satellite-based observations and computer model simulations of tropical rainfall variation throughout the day in an effort to determine the root cause of the temporal patterns. Their results, published recently in , show that daily tropical rainfall distribution is significantly shaped by heating of the upper atmosphere.

Curiously, location on the globe strongly determines the average time of day for the heaviest rainfall. Continental settings often receive most of their rainfall in the late afternoon, after sunlight has heated the land surface throughout the day. Conversely, in tropical ocean settings, the maximum rainfall comes in the late night/early morning. In fact, detailed examination of observed tropical patterns reveals that rainfall often clusters into two uneven peaks, separated by roughly 12 hours, a pattern reminiscent of the familiar twice-daily ocean tide heights (figure 1, “Observed” curve).

Sun-driven atmospheric waves

The atmosphere also experiences a type of daily tide. It has been long recognized that a global-scale pressure wave passes through the upper atmosphere, forced by the daily cycle of sunlight heating the ozone layer and propagating down toward the land surface. In the tropics, this wave can be seen in the daily fluctuations in barometric pressure, which peak at about 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.

Sakazaki and his team speculated that the tropical rainfall patterns are also intimately tied to this sun-driven atmospheric wave. By modeling rainfall patterns both with and without the forcing by upper atmospheric heating, they were able to show that the double peak of rainfall abundance in many tropical locations is accounted for only if the 12-hour atmospheric wave is included (figure 1, red curve).

“It is exciting to find that rainfall has distinct “footprints” of the stratospheric ozone heating, which occurs very far above us,” said Sakazaki. “Weather at the ground may be influenced by a much higher layer of the atmosphere than previously thought.”

Kevin Hamilton, a collaborator on this project and retired IPRC director, noted, “Understanding the self-organization of rainfall over periods of hours to days, and over large distances, is critical for improving forecasts of our day-to-day weather in the tropics.” In addition, he emphasized that this strong link between the rainfall patterns and the atmospheric tides provides a unique feature whose presence, or absence, can be used to evaluate the accuracy of rainfall pattern forecasting in atmospheric models.

—By Rachel Lentz

The has embarked on a long-term partnership with the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa ��(SOEST) to explore how long-range lightning data can potentially improve storm forecasting.

“Through the ingest of lightning and storm balloon data, this project aims to increase our ability to map water vapor and heat associated with condensation of water in hurricane storm clouds in the core of the storm,” said Professor , chair of the SOEST����and project lead. “In the process, details of the initial storm circulation in the hurricane model will be improved.”

In future years, the way the lightning data are ingested into the hurricane model will be refined, to provide a more sophisticated and balanced approach that improves the way in which individual storm clouds evolve in the model. A number of poorly forecast recent hurricanes will be targeted as case studies to spur improvement in hurricane simulation and prediction.

Businger has been a pioneer in storm balloon development and suggests that floating storm balloons at low levels into a hurricane will provide crucial data on the energy exchange between hurricanes and the ocean surface beneath. The goal is to construct affordable storm balloons that possess the needed buoyancy control to allow them to remain near the ocean surface as they move towards the eye of the hurricane. They also contain GPS for position information and Iridium satellite communication to send data back on the energy exchange that governs hurricane intensity.

“Hurricanes are the most destructive storms on Earth and our ability to accurately forecast changes in their strength before landfall has not improved significantly in 20 years,” said Businger.

The project began this summer in Colorado with the launch of the first storm balloon. The balloons for this experiment were produced in collaboration with , an engineering firm specializing in developing custom prototypes for atmospheric and oceanographic exploration.

“It was a picture perfect first release,” said Businger.

—By Marcie Grabowski

Ten years after one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history tore through New Orleans, a group of experts and specialists will convene to revisit the impact of Hurricane Katrina and discuss important lessons learned from the disaster and their implications for the future of �鶹��ý.

In conjunction with World Town Planning Day, the in collaboration with the presents “Lessons from Katrina and Implications for �鶹��ý” on Thursday, November 12.

“Given the recent increased frequency and intensity of storms threatening our islands, this topic is important and relevant,” said NDPTC Executive Director Karl Kim. “We have great resources from many different disciplines here at UH and we need to come together, share information and work together to build resilience.”

As part of the event, a group of expert panelists will share varying perspectives on the hazards and impact of natural disasters in the state. Panelists will include experts from a variety of fields including UH Mānoa professor Gary Barnes, lecturer Jen Darrah, Director of the George Atta, and engineering professor Ian Robertson.

Added Kim, “It is about combining the latest science and technology with a deep understanding of community vulnerabilities and social conditions so that we can better mobilize resources to plan for, respond to and recover from catastrophic events.”

Event details

“Lessons from Katrina and Implications for �鶹��ý” will be held on Thursday, November 12 with an opening reception at 5:30 p.m. at the UH Mānoa Saunders Courtyard. The reception will be followed by presentations and panel discussion in Crawford Lecture Hall at 7 p.m.

The event is a collaboration between �鶹��ýMānoa’s (NDPTC) and the along with the American Planning Association, Hawaii Chapter.

For more information on the event, contact NDPTC at (808) 956-0600.

A paper published this month by and researchers in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society details the development and utility of a computer model for the dispersion of volcanic smog or “vog,” which forms when volcanic sulfur dioxide gas interacts with water and coverts it to acid sulfate aerosol particles in the atmosphere.

Vog poses a serious threat to the health of �鶹��ý’s people as well as being harmful to the state’s ecosystems and agriculture. Even at the low concentrations, which can be found far from the volcano, vog can provoke asthma attacks in those with prior respiratory conditions. It also damages vegetation and crops downwind from the volcano.

News tools for predicting vog

Scientists from the UH Mānoa (SOEST), under the leadership of Professor of Meteorology Steve Businger, and in collaboration with researchers at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, developed a computer model for predicting the dispersion of vog. The vog model uses measurements of the amount of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emitted by Kīlauea, along with predictions of the prevailing winds, to .

The team of scientists developed an ultraviolet spectrometer array to provide near-real-time volcanic gas emission rate measurements; developed and deployed SO₂ and meteorological sensors to record the extent of Kīlauea’s gas plume (for model verification); and developed web-based tools to share observations and model forecasts, providing useful information for safety officials and the public and raising awareness of the potential hazards of volcanic emissions to respiratory health, agriculture and general aviation.

“Comparisons between the model output and vog observations show what users of the vog model forecasts have already guessed—that online model data and maps depicting the future location and dispersion of the vog plume over time are sufficiently accurate to provide very useful guidance, especially to those who suffer allergies or respiratory conditions that make them sensitive to vog,” said Businger.

A statewide concern

Kīlauea volcano, the most active volcano on earth, is situated in the populous State of �鶹��ý. The current eruption has been ongoing since 1983, while a new summit eruption began in 2008.

The most significant effect of this new eruption has been a dramatic increase in the amount of volcanic gas that is emitted into �鶹��ý’s atmosphere. While the effects of lava eruption are limited to the southeastern sector of the Big Island, the volcanic gas emitted by Kīlauea is in no way constrained; it is free to spread across the entire state.

“Higher gas fluxes from Kīlauea appear to be the new norm. For the State of �鶹��ý to understand the effects of vog and then come up with strategies to efficiently mitigate its effects, accurate forecasts of how vog moves around the state are vital,” said Businger.

The American Recovery Act award that originally funded the development of the vog model program has long since expired. Funding for a PhD candidate, Andre Pattantyus, to help keep the online vog products available has been provided by SOEST and the .

Because Pattantyus, the lead vog modeler, is set to graduate this winter, the vog program is at a crossroads. Businger is working with stakeholders that include federal, state, commercial and private interests to jointly fund an ongoing vog and dispersion modeling capability for the residents of �鶹��ý.

Public support of the vog modeling program is critical for the program to continue providing vog plume predictions in future.

—By Marcie Grabowski

researchers determined that heavy rainfall events have become more frequent over the last 50 years on �鶹��ý Island. For instance, a rare storm with daily precipitation of nearly 12 inches, occurring once every 20 years by 1960, has become a rather common storm event on the Big Island of �鶹��ý— returning every 3 to 5 years by 2009.

In a paper titled published in the , Ying Chen, a UH Mānoa graduate student at the time of the study, and Pao-Shin Chu, professor of atmospheric sciences at UH Mānoa and head of the , analyzed extreme precipitation events and the frequency with which they occur on three islands in �鶹��ý–Oʻahu, Maui and �鶹��ý Island.

While heavy rainfall events have become more frequent over the last 50 years on the easternmost island in �鶹��ý, the opposite behavior is observed for Oʻahu and Maui to the west. There, rainfall extremes have become less frequent in the last five decades. This study, therefore, also reveals a regional—that is, east to west—difference in how precipitation patterns are responding to a changing climate.

“In the past, the frequency of heavy rainfall events was assumed to be fairly constant. However, because climate is changing, the assumption of stable precipitation climatology is questionable and needs to be reconsidered,” said Chu.

“Changes in the frequency of heavy rain events have repercussions on ecological systems, property, transportation, flood hazards and engineering design—including sewage systems, reservoirs and buildings.”

This study also provides clues about why and how the frequency of precipitation extremes has changed. Chu and Chen found a greater number of extreme rain events during La Nina years and the opposite during El Nino years.

In this study, the number of rain gauges used was limited—the researchers used information from 24 weather stations on the three islands. For future work, Chu hopes analyzing data from additional stations will provide a more detailed assessment of changing rain patterns across the Hawaiian Islands.

—By Marcie Grabowski

Bin Wang, professor and former chair of the within the , was awarded the 2015 by the for “creative insights leading to important advances in the understanding of tropical and monsoonal processes and their predictability.”

Wang has been with the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at UH Mānoa since 1987. He��is a world-leading meteorologist specializing in climate and atmospheric dynamics. He has shared the wealth of his expertise and depth of his insights through more than 290 peer-reviewed publications and pivotal participation in international scientific conferences. His publications have more than 20,000 citations, with 65 papers having more than 100 citations each, according to Google Scholar.

Active in the science community, Wang��has organized numerous international workshops and conferences and has been serving on scientific advisory committees in his field. He��is among the most influential scientists in monsoon research worldwide and in development of meteorological sciences and climate predictions in the Asian-Pacific region.

• More on Wang:

He has had profound influence on the future of the field through extraordinary commitment to train a new generation of scientists by providing both support and guidance. He has edited a highly regarded and widely used textbook, . Twenty graduate students and 30��postdoctoral associates have studied with him and some have become prominent scientists in the field.

The Carl-Gustaf Rossby Research Medal is presented to individuals on the basis of outstanding contributions to the understanding of the structure or behavior of the atmosphere. It represents the highest honor that the society can bestow upon an atmospheric scientist.

—By Marcie Grabowski

climate scientists have partnered with Australian colleagues to solve a puzzle that has challenged scientists for over a decade. Climate models predict that the equatorial Pacific trades should weaken with increasing greenhouse gases. Yet, since the early 1990s, satellites and climate stations reveal a rapid and unprecedented strengthening of the Pacific trade winds, accelerating sea level rise in the western Pacific and impacting both Pacific and global climate.

“The answer to the puzzle is that recent rapid Atlantic Ocean warming has affected climate in the Pacific,” say the scientists. Their findings from observations and modeling experiments are published in the August 3, 2014, online issue of .

“We were surprised to find that the main cause of the Pacific wind, temperature and sea level trends over the past 20 years lies in the Atlantic Ocean,” says Shayne McGregor at the and lead author of the study. “We saw that the rapid Atlantic surface warming observed since the early 1990s, induced partly by greenhouse gasses, has generated unusually low sea level pressure over the tropical Atlantic. This, in turn, produces an upward motion of the overlying air parcels. These parcels move westward aloft and then sink again in the eastern equatorial Pacific, where their sinking creates a high pressure system. The resulting Atlantic-Pacific pressure difference strengthens the Pacific trade winds.”

“Stronger trade winds in the equatorial Pacific also increase the upwelling of cold waters to the surface. The resulting near-surface cooling in the eastern Pacific amplifies the Atlantic-Pacific pressure seesaw, thus further intensifying the trade winds,” says Professor Axel Timmermann, corresponding author of the study at UH ����ԴDz�’�� . “It turns out that the current generation of climate models underestimates the extent of the Atlantic-Pacific coupling, which means that they cannot properly capture the observed eastern Pacific cooling, which has contributed significantly to the leveling off, or the hiatus, in global warming.”

In contrast to previous studies that explain the eastern Pacific cooling as resulting solely from natural climate variability, the international climate research team points to a climate feedback that has been overlooked, namely, that the recent Atlantic warming affects the atmospheric circulation over the Pacific, leading to an increased persistence of cold ocean conditions there.

“It will be difficult to predict when the Pacific cooling trend and its contribution to the global warming hiatus will come to an end. The natural variability of the Pacific, associated for instance with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, is one candidate that could drive the system back to a more even Atlantic-Pacific warming situation,” says co-author Matthew England from the University of New South Wales.

“Our study documents that some of the largest tropical and subtropical climate trends of the past 20 years are all linked—strengthening of the Pacific trade winds, acceleration of sea level rise in the western Pacific, eastern Pacific surface cooling, the global warming hiatus and even the massive droughts in California,” explains co-author Malte Stuecker from UH Mānoa’s meteorology department.

Adds <’>Fei-Fei Jin, a climate scientist also at UH Mānoa’s meteorology department, “We are just starting to grasp the scope of the impacts of this global atmospheric reorganization and of the out-of phase temperature trends in the Atlantic and Pacific regions.”

—

The prestigious CAREER grants were awarded to University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa Assistant Professor Jason Kumar in , Assistant Professor Jennifer Small in and Associate Professor Yi Zuo in . They are considered early-career faculty with promising futures in research and science education.

Jason Kumar

Kumar is examining new and emerging dark matter models to determine whether they can explain unexpected signals picked up during recent dark matter detection experiments.

As part of UH Mānoa’s QuarkNet program—a long-term, national collaboration among high school teachers, their students and particle physicists—Kumar has been working with teachers from Kahuku, Kamehameha, Maryknoll, Maui and Punahou high schools. He is helping them to identify and bring the most exciting current developments in high-energy physics into their classrooms.

Kumar is quick to highlight the leading role that the university has played in a large number of high-profile particle physics experiments, including work at the KamLAND and Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatories.

“�鶹��ý is one of the most isolated land-masses in the world, and many high school students have not spent much time on the mainland,” Kumar said. “I believe that a vital part of any effort to engage students in high-energy physics research is to demonstrate a connection to something they can participate in while they are here on �鶹��ý.”

Jennifer Small

Small is investigating the effects of aerosols on clouds and precipitation. She is using data from remote sensing studies, direct observation and global climate models to analyze aerosol-cloud interactions on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Her project address the uncertainty about the overall climatic effects of fine particles in the air, both natural and man-made.

“Aerosol-cloud interactions are among the most important and least understood factors affecting climate change,” Small said. “It’s the biggest question mark.”

She plans to bring innovative multimedia teaching tools to her introductory climate courses at UH Mānoa, including classroom assignments for students to produce podcasts relating atmospheric science content to personal, real-world experiences.

Small will also organize �鶹��ý’ first Expanding Your Horizons conference in 2014.

Yi Zuo

Zuo is studying the molecular mechanisms of lung surfactant, which is crucial to maintaining normal respiratory function in air sacs of the lung.

His NSF CAREER project goal is to help expand the use of clinical surfactants to treat various neonatal and adult respiratory diseases, including respiratory distress syndrome.

Read the for more.

Malte Stuecker and Fei-Fei Jin from the and Axel Timmermann from the have discovered a rhythm behind El Niño’s sporadic behavior. According to their findings, reported in the , El Niño’s peaking time around Christmas and rapid decrease by February to April is due to an unusual wind pattern. This wind pattern straddles the equatorial Pacific during strong El Niño events and swings back and forth with a period of 15 months, explaining El Niño’s close ties to the annual cycle.

“This atmospheric pattern peaks in February and triggers some of the well-known El Niño impacts, such as droughts in the Philippines and across Micronesia and heavy rainfall over French Polynesia,” says lead author Stuecker.

When anomalous trade winds shift south, they can terminate an El Niño by generating eastward propagating equatorial Kelvin waves that eventually resume upwelling of cold water in the eastern equatorial Pacific. This wind shift is part of the larger, unusual atmospheric pattern accompanying El Niño events, in which a high-pressure system hovers over the Philippines and the major rain band of the South Pacific rapidly shifts equatorward.

With the help of numerical atmospheric models, the scientists discovered that this unusual pattern originates from an interaction between El Niño and the seasonal evolution of temperatures in the western tropical Pacific warm pool.

A study of the evolution of the anomalous wind pattern in the model reveals a rhythm of about 15 months accompanying strong El Niño events, which is considerably faster than the three-to-five-year timetable for El Niño events, but slower than the annual cycle.

“This type of variability is known in physics as a combination tone,” says Jin, professor of meteorology and co-author of the study.

“The unusual wind pattern straddling the equator during an El Niño is such a combination tone between El Niño events and the seasonal march of the sun across the equator,” says co-author Timmermann, climate scientist at the International Pacific Research Center and professor at the . He adds, “It turns out that many climate models have difficulties creating the correct combination tone, which is likely to impact their ability to simulate and predict El Niño events and their global impacts.”

The scientists are convinced that a better representation of the 15-month tropical Pacific wind pattern in climate models will improve El Niño forecasts. Moreover, they say the latest climate model projections suggest that El Niño events will be accompanied more often by this combination tone wind pattern, which will also change the characteristics of future El Niño rainfall patterns.

For more information, read the .

Projections of rainfall changes from global warming have been very uncertain because scientists could not determine how two different mechanisms will impact rainfall. These two mechanisms turn out to complement each other and together shape the spatial distribution of seasonal rainfall in the tropics, according to scientists who published their study in the .

Shang-Ping Xie, meteorology professor at the at the and the Roger Revelle Professor at at the University of California at San Diego, co-authored the recent paper along with colleagues from the .

Current rainfall model

Under current models, one mechanism called “wet-gets-wetter” predicts that rainfall should increase in regions that already have much rain, with a tendency for dry regions to get dryer. The second mechanism, called the “warmer-gets-wetter,” predicts rainfall should increase in regions where sea surface temperature rises above the tropical average warming.

The team of scientists compared current rainfall in the tropics with future rainfall projections from simulations of 18 cutting-edge climate models forced with a likely scenario of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Merging models increases accuracy

They found that rainfall in the models increases more in regions that currently are already wet and decreases slightly in currently dry regions, supporting the wet-gets-wetter mechanism. But they also found evidence for the warmer-gets-wetter mechanism in that the higher the surface temperature in a region, the more the rainfall. By merging the impact from the two mechanisms, they noted that they could account for nearly 80 percent of the variations in the models’ projected rainfall changes from global warming.

The complementary action of the two mechanisms is because the pattern of ocean warming induces more convection and rainfall near the Equator, where the temperature warming peaks, and subsidence and drying further away from the Equator, reflecting the warmer-gets-wetter view. But as this band of increased rain marches back and forth across the Equator with the Sun, it causes seasonal rainfall anomalies that follow the wet-gets-wetter pattern.

The wet-gets-wetter mechanism contributes more to the projected seasonal rainfall changes, whereas the warmer-gets-warmer mechanism more to the mean annual rainfall changes.

“Because our present observations of seasonal rainfall are much more reliable than the future sea surface temperatures, we can trust the models’ projections of seasonal mean rainfall for regional patterns more than their annual mean projections,” said Xie. “This is good news for monsoon regions where rainfall by definition is seasonal and limited to a short rainy season. Many highly populated countries under monsoon influences already face water shortages.”

—A UH Mānoa news release

Monsoon rainfall in the Northern Hemisphere impacts about 60 percent of the world population in Southeast Asia, West Africa and North America. Given the possible impacts of global warming, solid predictions of monsoon rainfall for the next decades are important for infrastructure planning and sustainable economic development. Such predictions, however, are very complex because they require not only pinning down how man made greenhouse gas emissions will impact the monsoons and monsoon rainfall, but also a knowledge of natural long-term climate swings, about which little is known so far.

To tackle this problem Professor of Meteorology Bin Wang, from the at the University of �鶹��ý at Mānoa, and an international team of scientists examined climate data to see what happened in the Northern Hemisphere during the last three decades, a time during which the global-mean surface-air temperature rose by about 0.4°C. Current theory predicts that the Northern Hemisphere summer monsoon circulation should weaken under anthropogenic global warming.

Wang and his colleagues, however, found that over the past 30 years, the summer monsoon circulation, as well as the Hadley and the Walker circulations, have all substantially intensified. This intensification has resulted in significantly greater global summer monsoon rainfall in the Northern Hemisphere than predicted from greenhouse-gas-induced warming alone—namely a 9.5 percent increase, compared to the anthropogenic predicted contribution of 2.6 percent per degree of global warming.

Most of the recent intensification is attributable to a cooling of the eastern Pacific that began in 1998. This cooling is the result of natural longterm swings in ocean surface temperatures.

Their research was published in the .

“These natural swings in the climate system must be understood in order to make realistic predictions of monsoon rainfall and of other climate features in the coming decades,” said Wang. “We must be able to determine the relative contributions of greenhouse-gas emissions and of long-term natural swings to future climate change.”

—A

Global warming from greenhouse gases affects rainfall patterns in the world differently than that from solar heating, according to a study by an international team of scientists in the .

Using computer model simulations, the scientists, led by Jian Liu of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Bin Wang of the at the , showed that global rainfall has increased less over the present-day warming period than during the Medieval Warm Period, even though temperatures are higher today than they were then.

“Our climate model simulations show that this difference results from different sea surface temperature patterns” said UH Mānoa Professor of Meteorology Wang. “When warming is due to increased greenhouse gases, the gradient of sea surface temperature (SST) across the tropical Pacific weakens, but when it is due to increased solar radiation, the gradient increases. For the same average global surface temperature increase, the weaker SST gradient produces less rainfall, especially over tropical land.”

The team examined global precipitation changes over the last millennium and projections to the end of the 21st century, comparing natural changes from solar heating and volcanism with changes from man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Using an atmosphere-ocean coupled climate model that simulates realistically both past and present-day climate conditions, the scientists found that for every degree rise in global temperature, the global rainfall rate since the Industrial Revolution has increased less by about 40 percent than during past warming phases of the earth.

For more on the team’s research, read the

Curiosity, the NASA rover that landed on Mars last month, is sending remarkable weather observations from the Martian surface.

“From a weather point of view, Mars is the most ‘Earth-like’ of the other planets in our solar system, and many features of the weather there are similar to Earth,” says Kevin Hamilton, a pioneer in the area of computer modeling of the Martian atmosphere. Hamilton is the director of UH Mānoa’s and a professor of meteorology.

“The exciting new result from Curiosity is a regular and truly enormous swing in atmospheric pressure through each day,” Hamilton said. “Measurements on Earth show a daily swing in pressure of only about one-tenth of 1 percent of the mean pressure, whereas Curiosity is measuring swings of almost 10 percent of the daily average pressure. We observe such a relative pressure change on Earth only with the passage of an extremely strong hurricane. At the Curiosity site on Mars, this enormous pressure swing occurs regularly every day.”

For Hamilton, these reports of huge pressure swings came as welcome news. Almost 20 years ago, he had predicted that the daily variation on Mars would be particularly large in two “action centers” on the equator located on opposite sides of Mars. Unlike the earlier NASA probes, Curiosity landed right in one of the equatorial action centers, where another factor comes into play—a resonance in the Martian atmosphere.

“The idea of resonance is familiar in everyday contexts like pushing a child in a playground swing—if you synchronize your pushes with the natural frequency of the swing, it is easy to send the child high into the air,” Hamilton explains. “The remarkable Curiosity observations provide strong confirmation of a resonant vibration of the global atmosphere.”

Hamilton suggests that the daily resonant cycles could play a role in explaining a long-standing mystery on Mars, namely how the winds become sufficiently strong to lift enough dust from the surface to create the remarkable global dust storms seen every few years on that planet. “Now that my theory of a daily resonant oscillation seems confirmed, it might help explain the trigger for these dust storms,” he said.

—Adapted from a .