Press Releases 2012
Unprecedented, Man-made Trends in Ocean's Acidity
Honolulu, January 22, 2012
Recent carbon dioxide emissions have pushed the level of seawater acidity far above the range of the natural variability that existed for thousands of years and are affecting the calcification rates of shell-forming organism, according to a study of an international team of scientists led by IPRC's Tobias Friedrich and Axel Timmermann. Their study appears in the January 22 online issue of Nature Climate Change.
Tsunami Debris Survey Launched Northwest of Midway
Honolulu, January 25, 2012 
The March 11, 2011 earthquake northeast of Japan and the impact of subsequent tsunami wave on the Tohoku coastline produced as much as 25 million tons of debris. A large amount of the debris was released into the ocean. Under the influence of winds and currents, floating debris is dispersing over a large area and drifting eastward; it is predicted to reach Hawaii and the West Coast of the United States within the coming two years. In order to obtain some certainty about the model predictions, an expedition was made to survey the ocean northwest of Midway during December. Read more about the survey.
Press Releases 2011
Russian Ship Finds Tsunami Debris where Scientists Predicted
October 13, 2011
Ever since the Japan tsunami on March 11 washed millions of tons of debris into the Pacific, IPRC’s Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner have been trying to track the trajectory of this debris that can threaten small ships and coastlines. Until now they had only their state-of-the-art – but still untested – computer model of currents to speculate where the debris might end up. Warned by maps of the scientists’ model, the Russian sail training ship, the STS Pallada, found an array of unmistakable tsunami debris on its homeward voyage from Honolulu to Vladivostok. More photos courtesy STS Pallada/Natalia Borodina.
APEC Climate Symposium Hosted by
UHM International Pacific Research Center
October 12, 2011
As part of the 2011 APEC activities in Honolulu, the APEC Climate Center is holding its Annual Symposium at the Keoni Auditorium, East-West Center, from October 17 through 20. Local host for the symposium is the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC), the climate center at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa.The media and the public are welcome to attend the first 3 days. The program is available at http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/meetings/workshops.php. If any media wish to set up interviews with presenters at the symposium, contact:
IPRC Outreach Specialist Gisela Speidel (808) 956-9252; gspeidel@hawaii.edu) or
Assistant Researcher June-Yi Lee (808) 956-7544; jylee@soest.hawaii.edu.
Author of the World Development Report 2010 to Give
The 2011 IPRC Public Lecture in Climate Science
October 10, 2011
Climate Change and Development: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable is
the title of this year’s IPRC Public Lecture in Climate Science. The free public lecture will be given by
Rosina Bierbaum, Dean of University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, at 7:00
pm, October 17, at the Art Auditorium, University of Hawaii at Manoa.
University of Hawaii Chosen for New Climate Science Center
October 7, 2011
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced today the establishment
of the Pacific Islands Climate Science Center, a consortium led by the
University of Hawaii at Manoa, the University of Hawaii at Hilo, and
the University of Guam. The Pacific Islands Climate Science Center will be
part of a network of eight regional centers being established by the
Department of the Interior. The centers will serve to provide land
managers in federal, state and local agencies access to the best
science available regarding climate change and other landscape-scale
stressors impacting the nation’s natural and cultural resources.
El Niño and the Tropical Eastern Pacific Annual Cycle
Run to the Same Beat
September 21, 2011
The interaction between El Niño events and the seasonal cycle of sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific can be described through a nonlinear phase synchronization mechanism, according to a study published in the September 16 issue of Physical Review Letters by climate scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The findings are expected to improve prediction of El Nino events.
Russian Tall Ship to Search for Missing Tsunami Debris
September 13, 2011 
Virtually nothing is known of the whereabouts of the tons of debris that were washed into the ocean by Japan’s March 11 tsunami. Nikolai Maximenko, who made model projections of the tsunami debris path, has now engaged the Russian 3-master STS Pallada, its Captain
Vasily Sviridenko and young cadets to look out for the debris and report what they see on their homeward journey from Honolulu to Vladivostok.
East Africa’s Climate
Under the Spell of El Niño since the Last Ice Age
August 4, 2011
The current severe drought in East Africa is being attributed to La Niña conditions that prevailed in the Pacific until May 2011. The waxing and waning of rainfall in eastern tropical Africa in unison with El Niño–Southern Oscillation is not unusual and existed already 20,000 years ago, though the region’s last 3,000 years have seen a less stable climate, according to a study published by an international group of scientists on August 5 in Science.
Tree Rings Tell a 1100-Year History of El Niño
May 6, 2011
Tree-ring records from North America give a continuous history of variations in El Niño intensity over the past 1,100 years and can be used to help climate models predict more reliably how El Niño will change in the face of global warming, according to the study published in the May 6th issue of Nature Climate Change by an international team of scientists led by Jinbao Li, International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii.
Where Will the Debris from Japan's Tsunami Drift in the Ocean?
April 6, 2011
The huge tsunami triggered by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake destroyed coastal towns near Sendaiin Japan, washing such things as houses and cars into the ocean. Based on a model derived from past trajectories of drifting buoys, projections of where this debris might head over the next 5 to 6 years have been made by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Click on figure to see animation.
Tropical Atlantic Sees Weaker Trade Winds and More Rainfall
February 6, 2011
Earth is warming but not evenly. Efforts to pin down regional climate impacts of this warming have been hampered by biased wind observations over oceans. Developing a new technique to remove the bias, scientists at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, found that during the last 60 years trade winds over the tropical Atlantic have weakened, ocean temperature patterns have shifted, and Amazon and Guinea Coast rainfall has increased. The study by Hiroki Tokinaga and Shang-Ping Xie appears in the online February 6 issue of Nature Geoscience.
Press Releases 2010
Study Could Mean Greater Anticipated Global Warming
November 22, 2010 
Global climate models disagree widely in the magnitude of the warming we can expect with increasing carbon dioxide. This is mainly because the models represent clouds differently. A new modeling approach successfully simulates the observed cloud fields in a key region for climate. The study finds a greater tendency for clouds to thin with global warming than in any of the current climate models. This means the expected warming may be greater than currently anticipated. The study by Lauer et al. is published in the Journal of Climate, Vol. 23, No. 21, 5844–5863.
Threshold Sea Surface Temperature for Hurricanes
and
Tropical Thunderstorms Is Rising
November 7, 2010
Scientists have known that atmospheric
convection in the form of hurricanes and tropical
ocean thunderstorms occurs when sea
surface temperature rises above a threshold. So how do rising ocean
temperatures with global warming affect this
threshold? If it does not rise, it could
mean more frequent hurricanes. The study by IPRC's Nat Johnson and Shang-Ping Xie shows this
threshold
is rising with global warming at the same rate as
tropical ocean temperatures. Their paper appears in
the Advance Online Publications of Nature Geoscience.
UH Scientist Predicts Plastic Garbage Patch in Atlantic Ocean
August 19, 2010
Where does the plastic garbage in the ocean go? Twenty-two years worth of data collected by undergraduate students aboard a sailing vessel has identified widespread floating plastic debris in the western North Atlantic that
is comparable to the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch.’ The study, led by a team of researchers from Sea Education Association (SEA), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), is published this week in Science.
The North Pacific, a Global Backup Generator
for Past Climate Change
July, 9, 2010
Toward the end of the last ice age, a major reorganization took place in the current system of the North Pacific, which may have buffered the global impacts of the collapsed circulation in the Atlantic, according to a study published by Yusuke Okazaki (JAMSTEC), Axel Timmermann (IPRC) and their international team in the Science. For press release.
Going After Regional Climate Patterns
of Global Warming
February 27, 2010
Ocean surface temperatures can be expected to increase mostly everywhere by the middle of the century, but the increase may vary by up to 1.5°C depending upon the region. These emerging ocean temperature patterns in the tropics and subtropics will lead to significant changes in rainfall patterns, according to work by IPRC’s Shang-Ping Xie and colleagues.
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