Lecturer with rank of: Professor
Ph.D. University of Washington
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My work is primarily concerned with the nature of atmospheric variability on time scales ranging from several days to a few decades. I am particularly interested in the roles of various internal dynamics processes and external influences in maintaining the mean and time-varying states of the atmospheric general circulation.
To attain my research goals, I diagnose the available meteorological records for the past half-century. I also design and analyze numerical experiments with models of the atmosphere and ocean. This synthesis of findings from observational and modeling approaches has been helpful in discerning various interactions between high-frequency disturbances and the quasi-stationary flow, and the impact of El Niño-related sea surface temperature anomalies on the global ocean-atmosphere coupled system. In particular, I have recently investigated the relationships between El Niño events and variability of the Asian-Australian monsoon. I have also studied the role of the atmospheric circulation in linearly SST (sea surface temperature) anomalies in the tropical Pacific to SST changes elsewhere in the world oceans.
Some of my recent research efforts are devoted to the nature of ocean-atmosphere feedbacks in tropical and extratropical regions. These investigations entail extensive analysis of output from a large suite of general circulation model experiments.
M.A. Alexander, I. Blade, M. Newman, J.R. Lanzante, N-C. Lau, and J.D. Scott, 2002: The atmospheric bridge: The influence of ENSO teleconnections on air-sea interactions over the global oceans. Journal of Climate, 15, 2205-2231.
N-C. Lau and M.J. Nath, 2000: Impact of ENSO on the variability of the Asian-Australian monsoons as simulated in GCM experiments.
Journal of Climate, 13, 4287-4309.
N-C. Lau and M.J. Nath, 2001: Impact of ENSO on SST variability in the North Pacific and North Atlantic: Seasonal dependence and role of extratropical sea-air coupling. Journal of Climate, 14, 2846-2866.