CEP-funded Researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography Looks at California’s Cloud Cover

San Diego (December 15, 2014) – As part of Climate Education Partners’ effort to protect the quality of life in San Diego, our researchers work to boost local understanding of our region’s climate. Examining regional fog and cloud patterns, Scripps Institution of Oceanography researcher Rachel Schwartz recently presented her findings at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting, as reported by Scripps Institution of Oceanography news center.

Schwartz, a graduate student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego presented findings of an analysis of cloud reports gathered since 1950 at West Coast airports.  The reports show coherent interannual and interdecadal variability, largely organized by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and a decline in coastal cloudiness that started in the 1950s as sea-surface temperatures generally warmed. That trend, though, has slowed or reversed since 1998, the year of the last major El Niño event.

“We bridged an apparent gap between research on broad-scale cloudiness over the oceans and research on regional coastal cloudiness and fog,” Schwartz said. “We focus on the terrestrial coastal margin in particular, yet do so over a very broad West Coast region, from San Diego all the way to the Aleutian Islands.”

Read more here.