[SLS] Eran Vos (Institut Pierre Simon Laplace)

“Climate Change, Geoengineering, and the Reorganization of Global Teleconnections”

Climate variability patterns such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and other large-scale modes influence weather, precipitation, and extreme events across much of the globe through a network of atmospheric and oceanic teleconnections. Traditionally, these teleconnections have been viewed primarily as features of natural climate variability. In this seminar, I will discuss emerging evidence that anthropogenic climate change is also reshaping the global teleconnection network, altering the strength, structure, and regional impacts of climate variability.

I will then examine how proposed climate intervention strategies, including stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and marine cloud brightening (MCB), further modify these teleconnection pathways. Using climate model simulations, I will show how different solar radiation modification approaches can alter large-scale circulation patterns, influence ENSO variability, and affect extreme events such as Atlantic tropical cyclones through distinct dynamical mechanisms. While these interventions may offset some aspects of global warming, they can also produce unintended regional climate responses and changes in extreme-event risk.

Together, these results suggest that understanding and predicting future climate requires moving beyond changes in mean temperature and considering how both greenhouse forcing and climate intervention reshape the global network of climate variability and teleconnections that governs regional climate impacts.

Sack Lunch Seminar Series —
Informal seminar series within PAOC (Program in Atmospheres, Oceans, and Climate) that focuses on more specialized topics than the PAOC Colloquium. The presentations are either given by an invited speaker or by a member of PAOC and can focus on new research or discussion of a paper of particular interest.

Contact: sacklunch-committee@mit.edu