Daniel R. Cayan Researcher  Climate Research Division Scripps Institution of Oceanography University of California, San Diego             and  Water Resources Division US Geological Survey 9500 Gilman Drive - 0224 La Jolla, CA 92093 – 0224 Office: (858) 534-4507 Fax: (858) 534-8561 dcayan@ucsd.edu

Education

Ph.D. 1990, Oceanography/University of California, San Diego M.S. 1977, Meteorology/University of California, Davis M.S. 1972, Oceanography/University of Michigan B.S. 1970, Meteorology and Oceanography/University of Michigan
	Current Projects
	California Applications Program NOAA Office of Global Programs   The California Applications Program (CAP) is a collective of university, federal and private agency scientists studying the impacts of climate variability and attempting to improve climate and extended weather forecasts in the California region. CAP, organized by climate scientists at JIMO/SIO is funded by the Applied Research Center and Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments programs of NOAA's Office of Global Programs. Located downstream of large Pacific influences such as ENSO and the PDO, California is impacted by climate variability across a broad and extremely diverse physical/biological setting as well as across the Nation's largest population and economy. CAP is working to improve climate information and forecasts for fire prevention and management, water resources and hazards, and human health. To evaluate the utility of this information, the program has identified and is collaborating with a selected set of managers at the federal, state, and local level to address the needs of these specific applications. CAP is funded by the NOAA Office of Global Programs and directed by Dan Cayan. California Boating and Coastal Weather Department of Boating and Waterways Dan Cayan With P. Bromirski, continued studies of California wave climate are underway. A very useful data base (early 1980's-through present) of coastal wave observations, worked up by Peter Bromirski, contains considerable month-to-month and year-to-year variability. What will be worked on here, in a continuing collaboration with Bromirski and Flick, is: · to describe and understand the atmospheric systems that generated high waves (at very low, low, high and very high frequencies) · determine which climate regimes (El Nino, La Nina, neutral years) favor the generation of each of these ·  assemble this information to provide better predictions of high wave incidence along the California coast.  A growing problem facing California coastal regions is the incidence of episodes with high sea level, which occurs during high astronomical tides but is exacerbated by weather and climate effects. We (Cayan, Westerling, Riddle and Flick) will continue our effort to build a model to estimate the occurrence of high sea level events during the next decades, using the following components: Tide prediction, ENSO (El Nino/Southern Oscillation), weather, and secular sea level rise. The first phase of this effort has begun, with the development of frequency distribution of anomalous daily sea levels at San Francisco for the entire climatology 1880-1999, and for the subsets of El Nino years, La Nina years, and neutral years. We are also continuing of our effort to extract conventional marine and coastal weather reported visibility (fog reports) for high fog episodes. The goal is better predictions and also better remote sensing of fog and coastal stratus. The hope is that a fog detection scheme can be perfected, and that eventually this can be applied to high temporal resolution (~hourly) from GEOS imagery. The next several months will use the conventional data as "ground truth" for testing this concept. We are also comparing the incidence of fog during these recent years with that which occurred during the historical period since 1950 to better understand climate influences on periods of high or low fog and stratus along the California coast and over the San Francisco Bay. Recently we have constructed a "May/June gloom" index, and a Santa Ana condition index, highlighted on the California Applications Program web page. Modeling and Predicting Long-Term Variability of Freshwater Inflow and water Quality in the Bay/Delta Department of Water Resources Dan Cayan Warm Seasonal Hydroclimatic Variability in Western North America NOAA Office of Global Programs   Dan Cayan Use of climate models to forecast mosquito abundance and encephalitis virus risk in California NOAA, Department of Commerce  University of California, Davis Center for Vector-borne Disease Research Dan Cayan Modeling, Predictability and Prediction of North American Hydrologic Extremes NOAA, Office of Global Programs Alexander Gershunov, Dan Cayan, Shyh-Chin Chen SIO's Contribution to the Accelerated Climate Prediction Initiative (ACPI): A proposal for A Demonstrative Project US Department of Energy Tim Barnett, Dan Cayan, Niklas Schneider

Publications

Cayan, D.R., S. Kammerdiener, M.D. Dettinger, J. M. Caprio, and D.H. Peterson, 2001: Changes in the Onset of Spring in the Western United States., Bull. Am. Met. Soc., 82(3), 399-415.

Cayan, D.R., K.T. Redmond, and L.G. Riddle, 1999: ENSO and hydrologic extremes in the Western United States., J. of Clim., 12(9), 2881-2893.

Cayan, D.R., M.D. Dettinger, H.F. Diaz, and N.E. Graham, 1998: Decadal climate variability of precipitation over western North America. J. of Clim., 11(12), 3148-3166.

Gershunov, A., Barnett, T. P., and D. R. Cayan: 1999: North Pacific interdecadal oscillation seen as factor in ENSO-related North American climate anomalies. EOS, 80(3), 25-30.

Miller, A.J., D.R. Cayan, and W.B. White, 1998: A Westward-intensified Decadal Change in the North Pacific Thermocline and Gyre-Scale Circulation. J. of Clim., 11(12), 3112-3127.

McGowan, J.A., D.R. Cayan, and L.M. Dorman, 1998: Climate-ocean variability and ecosystem response in the northeast Pacific. Science, 281 (, 210-217.

White, W.B. and D.R. Cayan, 1998: Quasi-periodicity and global symmetries in interdecadal upper ocean temperature variability. J. of Geophys. Res., 103(C10), 21,335-21,354.

Weinheimer, A.L. and D.R. Cayan, 1997: Radiolarian assemblages from Santa Barbara Basin sediments: recent interdecadal variability. Paleoceanography, 12(5), 658-670.

White, W.B., J. Lean, D.R. Cayan, and M.D. Dettinger, 1996: Response of global upper ocean temperature to changing solar irradiance. J. Geophys. Res., 102, 3255-3266.

Reverdin, G., Y. Kushnir and D.R. Cayan, 1996: Decadal variability of hydrography in the upper northern North Atlantic 1948-1997. J. Geophys. Res., 102(C4), 8,505-8,531.

Cayan, D. R., 1996: Interannual Climate variability and snow pack in the western United States. J. Clim., 9(5), 928-948.

Cayan, D. R. and K. P. Georgakakos, 1995: Hydroclimatology of continental watersheds: (ii) spatial analyses. Water Resources Research, 31, 677-697.

Dettinger, M. D. and D. R. Cayan, 1995: Large-scale atmospheric forcing of recent trends toward early snowmelt runoff in California. J. of Climate, 8(4), 606-623.