Prof. David S Battisti

My interests are focussed on understanding how the atmosphere, ocean, land and cryosphere interact to create organized patterns of anomalies on time scales from seasons to centuries and beyond. This includes the following phenomenon: El Nino/Southern Oscillation and the very low frequency ENSO-like variability, the Arctic Oscillation/ North Atlantic Oscillation, and the decadal variations in the tropical Atlantic. Most of my interests are along the lines of "identifying and understanding a phenomenon through modeling, analysis of observations and theory." Some of my work is oriented to improving the predictions of ENSO, which includes work to improve the design of the ENSO observing system. For the past year I have been re-examining the old saying "Europe is warm because of the Gulf Stream." Surprisingly, there is overwhelming evidence that this statement can not be true. This work has led me to examine the factors that are responsible for localized storm tracks in the northern hemisphere winter. For the past two years I have been very interested in issues related to paleoclimate, including the climate of the mid Holocene and the physics of glacial-interglacial cycles. In almost all cases, I carry out my science using a balance of theory, intermediate modeling, analysis of observations and, when necessary, coupled atmosphere/ocean General Circulation Models.