EESS Seminar Series: Jeff Shaman - The ENSO-North African-Asian Jet Teleconnection: Dynamics and Implications

This talk will address two areas of research. The first portion will focus on climate dynamics and the influence of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on remote climate systems. ENSO is known to affect climate and weather patterns throughout the world. This influence of ENSO is typically communicated via disturbances that travel through the atmosphere—communications which are generally termed atmospheric teleconnections; however, the precise processes responsible for these ENSO atmospheric teleconnections are often not fully understood. Here we explore the dynamics of the ENSO atmospheric teleconnection with the North African-Asian (NAA) jet. The NAA jet extends from the subtropical North Atlantic, across North Africa and Asia, to the North Pacific. We show that conditions in the NAA jet are modulated by an unusual combination of planetary, or Rossby, waves. The response of the NAA jet to these waves affects Atlantic basin hurricane development and the Indian monsoons.

The second portion will explore some of the effects of climate, weather and hydrology on infectious disease. Previous studies have indicated that relative humidity affects influenza virus survival (IVS) and influenza virus transmission (IVT). We demonstrate that absolute humidity provides a statistically stronger and more physically-sound explanation for the observed variability of IVS and IVT. In addition, seasonal variations of absolute humidity provide an explanation for the observed seasonality of influenza incidence in temperate regions. We also examine the effect of hydrological variability on West Nile virus (WNV) amplification and transmission. An operational system for monitoring and predicting WNV transmission risk in Florida is presented