Department of Atmospheric Sciences – in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

ATMO graduate student Gerardo Rivera Tello tackles real-worlds issues at AI hackathon

The first-place team, Untrained Parameters, created the Hawaiʻi Climate Explorer—an interactive web app that visualizes temperature and rainfall data from the Hawaiʻi Climate Data Portal, a project led by UH experts. The team included PhD students Federica Chiti and Dhvanil Desai (Institute for Astronomy), Fahim Yasir (UH Cancer Center), Gerardo Rivera Tello (Department of Atmospheric Sciences), and master’s student Yada Ponpittayalert (College of Education).

El Niño research brings global experts to UH Mānoa

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa hosted the ENSO Winter School 2025 from March 15 to 23, bringing together 32 students and 19 instructors from 16 countries. The program provided an immersive learning experience focused on El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate pattern that influences global weather.

Deep learning illuminates atmospheric blocking events of past, future

Atmospheric blocking events are persistent, high-impact weather patterns that occur when large-scale high-pressure systems become stationary and divert the jet stream and storm tracks for days to weeks, and can be associated with record-breaking flooding or heat waves, such as in Europe in 2023. In a new study, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa atmospheric scientist Christina Karamperidou used a deep learning model to infer the frequency of blocking events over the past 1,000 years and shed light on how future climate change may impact these significant phenomena.

Students build giant antenna to explore far reaches of Earth’s atmosphere

Undergraduates at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa were inspired to build a giant antenna to explore hundreds of miles above the planet. The antenna, known as an ionosonde, project began after a lecture from atmospheric sciences Professor Giuseppe Torri about phenomena that can occur in the ionosphere, one of the highest layers of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Aloha! Welcome to the home page of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences. We are entering our second half century providing education in atmospheric sciences at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Since 1988 we have been part of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). To learn about our educational programs and our exciting research and service activities follow the links at the top of the page. For more information about the history and structure of the department, please visit our About the Department page.

The department also maintains an online Weather Server displaying real-time weather observations, including information on current weather conditions, and forecasts for Hawai’i, the central Pacific region, and the continental United States.