Jason Paul Finley, Ph.D., CCM, GISP

Published Work (A Sample)

El Niño Southern Oscillation in a World with a Changing Climate (American Meteorological Society Presentation and Poster - January 2021)

August 2020

El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a coupled atmospheric-oceanic phenomenon that directly affects the tropical Pacific Ocean and indirectly impacts weather events across the globe. El Niño (La Niña) is defined as abnormally warm (cold) water over the eastern tropical Pacific and is considered the warm (cold) phase of ENSO. The Southern Oscillation is the change in atmospheric pressure across the tropical Pacific, where lower (higher) than normal pressure in the eastern Pacific occurs during El Niño (La Niña). Because ENSO can have devastating impacts across the world, research into how ESNO will change in the future is paramount. Recent climate change research suggests a 1- and 4-degree Celsius global temperature increase by 2100, although there is a lack of consensus on how this will affect the atmospheric and oceanic temperatures across the Pacific. Therefore, numerous studies that investigate the relationship between ENSO and proposed climate change scenarios are reviewed.

Research on this relationship indicates a broad spectrum of possibilities. Some studies suggest an intensification and increased frequency of El Niño and La Niña events in conjunction with a weaker Walker Circulation as the climate warms. The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) support a theory that an expansion of warm water in the western Pacific (along with rainfall) will flow into the central and eastern Pacific. Additional research claims that changes in the multiple, non-linear components of ENSO could cancel each other and yield no statistically significant changes. Nonetheless, some research suggests that the impacts of ENSO could worsen regardless of how ENSO changes. For example, climate change may cause an increased frequency of temperature extremes and drought within the midlatitudes during ENSO events.

There remains a great deal of uncertainty about the impact of climate change on ENSO. Because these impacts can have dire societal consequences, more research is needed to understand the ENSO system, the interactions of ESNO components, and how climate change will alter these components. Thus, the need for scientists to understand more completely the climate system itself, let alone how each piece of the complex ENSO system will respond to global climate change, is briefly discussed.

A Precipitation-Induced Landslide Susceptibility Model for Natural Gas Transmission Pipelines
(The 2010 8th International Pipeline Conference)

September 2010

Landslides related to heavy rainfall can cause extensive damage to natural gas transmission pipelines. We have developed and implemented a geographic information system (GIS) model that evaluates near real-time precipitation-induced landslide susceptibility. This model incorporates state-wide precipitation data and geologically-based landslide classifications to produce rapid landslide risk evaluation for Pacific Gas & Electric Company’s (PG&E) gas transmission system during winter rain storms in California. The precipitation data include pre-storm event quantitative precipitation forecasts (QPF) and post-storm event quantitative precipitation estimates (QPE) from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The geologic classifications are based on slope, susceptible geologic formations, and the locations of historic or known landslide occurrences. Currently the model is calibrated using qualitative measures. Various scientists have developed large landslide databases with associated rainfall statistics to determine rainfall thresholds that trigger landslides. With a sufficient number of landslides, we can more precisely determine minimum rainfall thresholds using similar methods.