Home | Christina Karamperidou

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We use a hierarchy of climate models (from simple theoretical models to comprehensive Earth System Models) and leverage advanced statistics and machine learning techniques to model and understand the dynamics of climate and its impact on weather risk.

Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

I ka wā ma mua, I ka wā ma hope

(look to the past to move forward)

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

Marcel Proust, 1871-1922

WELCOME!

Our research group is based at the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

The group is led by Prof. Christina Karamperidou [pronunciation] and focuses on ENSO dynamics and predictability, extreme events in response to large-scale climate variability and change, paleoclimate, and machine learning applications in environmental science and climate model optimization.

News & Highlights

Deep learning illuminates atmospheric blocking events of past, future

October 2024

In a new study published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment, atmospheric scientist Christina Karamperidou used a deep learning model to infer the frequency of atmospheric blocking events over the past 1,000 years and shed light on how future climate change may impact these significant phenomena.

$26M grant fuels UH research on climate-friendly cooling

August 2024

We are excited to be part of ERC EARTH: UH is part of a team of six universities that has been awarded $26 million to establish EARTH, one of four new NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERC). EARTH will create a transformative, sustainable refrigerant lifecycle to reduce global warming from refrigerants while increasing the energy efficiency of heating, ventilation and cooling.

Dynamics, Predictability, and Impacts of ENSO Diversity in Past, Present, and Future Climates

November 2023

Click here to watch the invited talk at the Seminar Series of the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC), University of Maryland.

Assessing El Niño ‘flavors’ to unravel past variability, future impact

December 8, 2022

The new set of climate model simulations developed by Karamperidou and co-author Pedro DiNezio, associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, are the first to allow the study of changes in the frequency of El Niño flavors during the past 12,000 years. This enabled the researchers to test a hypothesis that Karamperidou and colleagues posed in 2015—that paleoclimate records across the Pacific could be explained by changes in El Niño flavors.

El Niño research earns Christina Karamperidou early career scientist award

November 10, 2022

Christina Karamperidou, SOEST associate professor of atmospheric sciences, was honored with an Early Career Scientist Award by the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) for her “significant contributions to understanding El Niño spatiotemporal diversity and associated impacts, from paleoclimate to modern times through multidisciplinary international collaborations.”

Holocene hydroclimate variability in the tropical Pacific explained by changing ENSO diversity.

November 25, 2022

Our new paper is out in Nature Communications!

Past changes in climate variability across the tropical Pacific inferred from paleoclimate records can be explained by changes in both the frequency in which El Nino events with different spatial patterns occur, as well as their hydroclimatic impacts.

PHOTO - Satellite image showing El Nino sea surface temperature departure from norm-2015.1

HAWAI‘I DROUGHT DURING EL NIÑO WINTER? NOT ALWAYS, ACCORDING TO NEW RESEARCH

January 7, 2021

Our paper on the impacts of Eastern and Central Pacific events on Hawaiian rainfall is published in the Journal of Climate. Read more on SOEST news, UH News, Environmental News Network, Mirage News, and Science Daily.

NEW BOOK ADVANCES KNOWLEDGE OF EL NINO IN A CHANGING CLIMATE

November 13, 2019

El Niño and La Niña events exert their influence worldwide, including in Hawaiʻi. Our participation in the international collaboration that led to this book continues the decades-long tradition of the University’s contributions to understanding and modeling ENSO.

COVERAGE OF THE IMPORTANCE OF ENSO FOR HAWAIʻI DROUGHT BY HPR

September 19, 2019

Ryan Finnerty of Hawaii Public Radio reports on drought, with Christina Karamperidou commenting on the role of ENSO in Hawaii's precipitation patterns.

ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES GRADUATE STUDENT AWARDED GRANT FROM NASA

July 24, 2019

Atmospheric Sciences graduate student Madeline McKenna is among the three students from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa who were awarded grants from Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program.

HIGH-RESOLUTION MODELING OF ENSO-INDUCED PRECIPITATION IN THE TROPICAL ANDES

January 2019

Our study published in Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology highlights that in order to better interpret paleo-ENSO proxies in regions with complex terrain it is important to not only consider the large-scale impacts of different ENSO flavors but also how these impacts are modulated by regional and small-scale atmospheric circulation, as well as the terrain.

CLIMATE SCIENTISTS TRAINED TO BE ON HOT SEAT

August 2016

MPR News reports on the Expert Witness Training Academy (EWTA). EWTA is funded in part by the Paleoclimate Program at the National Science Foundation and provides innovative workshops and training materials to scientists on how best to communicate scientific information in legal proceedings and other adversarial forums.

RESEARCH THEMES

DYNAMICS & PREDICTABILITY OF ENSO DIVERSITY AND ITS IMPACTS

The mechanisms behind ENSO strength and pattern diversity remain an open question: our studies utilize a hierarchy of models to better understand the response of ENSO diversity and its impacts in past, present, and future climates.

INTERACTING DYNAMICS OF TROPICAL AND EXTRATROPICAL CLIMATE

Extratropical atmospheric circulation is influenced by the tropics, and in turn it may influence tropical ocean-atmosphere variability: our studies look into the interactions between tropical climate variability and midlatitude atmospheric dynamics, including blocking events, atmosperic response to volcanic eruptions, surface temperature contrasts etc.

MULTI-RESOLUTION PALEOCLIMATE MODEL-PROXY SYNTHESIS

Paleoclimate proxy records reflect large-scale signals as they are modulated by regional processes and terrain influences: our studies combine the use of global climate models, high-resolution regional models and statistical downscaling methods to improve interpretation of proxies recording ENSO variability.

CONSTRAINTS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE PROJECTIONS

Model uncertainty is a main source of uncertainty in climate projections, especially at multidecadal scales: our studies focus on using our understanding of tropical climate process to identify model biases and constrain intermodel spread of future projections of tropical and global climate.

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