In my current role with the University of Washington’s Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies, I work closely with NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory Ocean Climate Stations group to advance knowledge of ocean-atmosphere coupling processes and modes of precipitation variability across time scales. Leveraging skills in research and data analysis, our team aims for a sustainable future for climate monitoring and deeper understanding of the global climate system.

Most of my work is done using global gridded data sets, satellite observations and in situ observing networks. I also collect in situ data such as upper-air profiles of atmospheric state variables, meteorological surface measurements, and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) high time resolution tropospheric precipitable water vapor for application to the study of precipitation variability. I have installed GNSS-Met networks and upper-air stations in northwest Mexico, the Southwest US and Central America as part of my research activities. I am also part of a team exploring the use of Unmanned Surface Vehicles for observing heat and moisture exchange at the ocean surface and upper ocean 3D currents across the tropical Pacific, aimed at capturing high time and space scale variability targeted by the recently redesigned Tropical Pacific Observing System Task Teams to improve models of the tropical ocean.

This research contributes to the current understanding of processes that control global heat and water budgets, with important consequences for operational forecasts and gridded data products. In addition, Central America, the Caribbean and the southwestern United States are global hot spots for increased temperatures and reduced rainfall by the end of the century. Thus, observing and advancing knowledge of precipitation variability in these regions is of particular importance for both assessing the uncertainty in the model future projections, as well as translating the impact of these projections to the local scale.