Statistics and Climate Journal Club

Statistics and Climate Journal Club at UCLA was founded by Sam Baugh and myself in October 2020, thanks to the suggestion and help from Professor Karen McKinnon.

Since then, we have been running the journal club at a bi-weekly cadence and hosted the discussion primarily on the virtual sphere due to the COVID. These discussions are made possible by contributions and participations of many colleagues at UCLA, especially those who have served as discussion leads. We also hosted a few seminar talks, delivered by speakers who generously shared their research with us remotely.

Journal club archive in reversed chronological order

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Winter 2022

03/02/2022 Paper discussion

• Joint discussion on Shepherd, 2021, Bringing physical reasoning into statistical practice in climate-change science

02/16/2022 Invited seminar

• Title: Atmospheric Physics-Guided Machine Learning: Towards Physically-Consistent, Data-Driven, and Interpretable Models of Convection
• Speaker: Tom Beucler
• Readings:
  • Brenowitz, Beucler, Pritchard, and Bretherton, 2020, Interpreting and stabilizing machine-learning parameterizations of convection
  • Beucler et al., 2021, Climate-Invariant Machine Learning
  • Beucler et al., 2021, Enforcing analytic constraints in neural networks emulating physical systems

02/02/2022 Paper discussion

• Sugihara et al., 2012, Detecting Causality in Complex Ecosystems led by Mengxi Wu

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Fall 2021

12/03/2021 Paper discussion

• Terray, 2021, A dynamical adjustment perspective on extreme event attribution led by Suqin Duan

11/19/2021 Invited seminar

• Title: Strengthened Causal Connections Between the MJO and the North Atlantic With Climate Warming
• Speaker: Savini Samarasinghe
• Readings:
  • Samarasinghe et al., 2021, Strengthened Causal Connections Between the MJO and the North Atlantic With Climate Warming

11/05/2021 Invited seminar

• Topic: A method for Detection and Attribution of Regional Precipitation Change Using Granger Causality
• Speaker: Mark Risser
• Related readings:
  • Sarojini et al., 2016, Detection and attribution of human influence on regional precipitation
  • Hegerl et al., 2015, Challenges in quantifying changes in the global water cycle
  • Knutson and Zeng, 2018, Model assessment of observed precipitation trends over land regions: Detectable human influences and possible low bias in model trends
  • Kirchmeier-Young and Zhang, 2020, Human influence has intensified extreme precipitation in North America
  • Risser et al., 2023, A framework for detection and attribution of regional precipitation change: Application to the United States historical record

10/22/2021 Paper discussion

• Mori et al., 2019, A reconciled estimate of the influence of Arctic sea-ice loss on recent Eurasian cooling led by Weiming Ma

10/08/2021 Paper discussion

• Barnes et al., 2019, Tropospheric and Stratospheric Causal Pathways Between the MJO and NAO led by Fiaz Ahmed

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Spring 2021

06/11/2021 Paper discussion

• Horton et al., 2015, Contribution of changes in atmospheric circulation patterns to extreme temperature trends led by Yizhou Zhuang

04/16/2021 Paper discussion

• Wrzesien and Pavelsky (2020): Projected changes to extreme runoff and precipitation events from a downscaled simulation over the western United States led by Stefan Rahimi

04/02/2021 & 05/14/2021 Paper discussion

• Sippel et al. 2019 Uncovering the Forced Climate Response from a Single Ensemble Member Using Statistical Learning led by Gavin D. Madakumbura

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Winter 2020

03/17/2021 Paper discussion

• Wills et al. 2018, Disentangling Global Warming, Multidecadal Variability, and El Niño in Pacific Temperatures led by Wenwen Kong

03/03/2021 Paper discussion

• Hewitson et al. 2014, Interrogating empirical-statistical downscaling led by Naomi Goldenson

02/17/2021 Paper discussion

• Katzfuss et al. 2017, Bayesian hierarchical spatio-temporal smoothing for very large datasets led by Sam Baugh

02/03/2021 Paper discussion

• Deser et al. 2020, Insights from Earth system model initial-condition large ensembles and future prospects led by Jesse Norris

01/20/2021 - Raphael et al. 2020, An assessment of the temporal variability in the annual cycle of daily Antarctic sea ice in the NCAR Community Earth System Model, version 2: a comparison of the historical runs with observations led by Thomas Maierhofer

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Fall 2020

12/09/2020 Paper discussion

• Sippel et al. 2020, Climate change now detectable from any single day of weather at global scale led by Wenwen Kong

11/25/2020 Paper discussion

• Ribes et al. 2017, A new statistical approach to climate change detection and attribution led by Gavin D. Madakumbura

10/28/2020 Paper discussion

• Risser et al. 2018, Spatially dependent multiple testing under model misspecification, with application to detection of anthropogenic influence on extreme climate events led by Sam Baugh

10/14/2020 Kick-off meeting

• Introductions, discussion topics and formats, suggestions, etc.