Sun Extended Seminar Series in Climate and Complex Systems Dynamics
Speaker: Dr. Zeng-Zhen Hu
Affiliation: Climate Prediction Center, Development Branch, NCEP/NWS/NOAA, College Park, MD, USA
Date: October 18, 2026
Time: 10:00-11:00 a.m. Beijing Time
Location: B1-302, Research Complex Building II, Nanjing Helsinki Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Science, Nanjing University–Suzhou, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215163, China
Virtual attendance: Join via Tencent Meeting
Tencent Meeting ID:670-180-580
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant mode of seasonal-to-interannual climate variability in the tropical Pacific and a major source of global climate predictability. This presentation reviews the history and current status of ENSO prediction, highlighting key advances and persistent challenges through selected unsuccessful forecast cases. The interdecadal regime shift around 1999/2000 is then examined, with a focus on the associated decrease in ENSO variability and increase in event frequency and their implications for prediction. Finally, examples of divergent projections of ENSO characteristics under a warming climate are presented. Potential sources of these discrepancies, including model biases and differences in approaches to isolating ENSO variability, are discussed. The presentation concludes by considering the challenges and opportunities for improving ENSO prediction and projections in a changing climate.
Dr. Zeng‑Zhen Hu (胡增臻) is a research scientist at the Climate Prediction Center (CPC), NOAA, and a member of the NOAA ENSO team. He joined the Climate Prediction Center in December 2009. His research focuses on ocean‑climate analysis and monitoring, air‑sea interaction, climate variability and predictability, and attribution of climate variations. His broad research interests include tropical Atlantic variability, global warming, U.S. climate variability, the quasi‑biennial oscillation (QBO), Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), Asian monsoon, and ENSO prediction. He works under the supervision of Dr. Arun Kumar.
Dr. Hu earned his Ph.D. in Climate Dynamics from Peking University, Beijing, China. Prior to joining CPC, he worked at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, as a postdoctoral fellow (1991‑1993) and associate research scientist (1993‑2000). He was a visiting associate professor at the Center for Climate System Research (CCSR), the University of Tokyo, Japan (1995‑1996), collaborating with Professors T. Nitta and M. Kimoto. He also served as a senior visiting scientist at the Max‑Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI), Hamburg, Germany (1998‑2000), working with Drs. L. Bengtsson, M. Latif, K. Arpe, Lyida D. Gates, and E. Roeckner. Before moving to NOAA, he was a postdoctoral research scientist (2000‑2002) and research scientist (2002‑2009) at the Center for Ocean‑Land‑Atmosphere Studies (COLA), Calverton, Maryland, USA, in collaboration with Drs. B. Huang, J. Kinter III, E. K. Schneider, B. Kirtman, R. Wu, Z. Wu, C. Stan, and K. Pegion.Dr. Hu has published more than 160 SCI‑indexed journal articles. He contributed as an author to the IPCC Third Assessment Report and served as a reviewer for the IPCC Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports. He previously served as Associate Editor for the American Meteorological Society journal Weather and Forecasting, and currently serves on the Academic Steering Committee at the Climate Prediction Center.
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