Hiroki Tokinaga, Professor

Research

I am a professor at the Research Institute for Applied Mechanics (RIAM) of Kyushu University, Japan. My research interests include diagnostic and modeling studies of observed climate variability and change over the tropics and extratropics, with a particular focus on ocean-atmosphere interaction. I have also reconstructed historical climate datasets from in situ observations including ship and buoy measurements to identify consistent patterns of regional climate variability and change.

Full list of publications
WASWind Project

Education

  • Ph.D., Graduate School of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Japan, 2005, Dissertation title: "Lower atmospheric response to extratropical ocean fronts"
  • M.S., Graduate School of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Japan, 2002.
  • B.S., Geoscience, University of Tsukuba, Japan, 2000.

Selected Publications

Tokinaga, H., S.-P. Xie and H. Mukougawa, 2017: Early 20th-century Arctic warming intensified by Pacific and Atlantic multidecadal variability. PNAS, 114, 6227-6232, doi:10.1073/pnas.1615880114.[Article]

Tokinaga, H., S.-P. Xie, C. Deser, Y. Kosaka, and Y. M. Okumura, 2012: Slowdown of the Walker circulation driven by tropical Indo-Pacific warming. Nature, 491, 439-443, doi: 10.1038/nature11576. [Article] [Supplementary Information] ©2012 NPG

Tokinaga, H., S.-P. Xie, A. Timmermann, S. McGregor, T. Ogata, H. Kubota, and Y.M. Okumura, 2012: Regional patterns of tropical Indo-Pacific climate change: Evidence of the Walker Circulation weakening. J. Climate, 25, 1689-1710. [Article] ©2012 AMS; [Highlight in Nature Geosci.]; [2012 Yamamoto-Shyono Medal from the Meteorological Society of Japan (in Japanese)]

Tokinaga, H., and S.-P. Xie, 2011: Weakening of the equatorial Atlantic cold tongue over the past six decades. Nature Geosci. 4, 222-226, doi:10.1038/ngeo1078. [Article] [Supplementary Information] ©2011 NPG

Tokinaga, H., and S.-P. Xie, 2011: Wave and Anemometer-based Sea-surface Wind (WASWind) for climate change analysis. J. Climate, 24, 267-285. [Article] ©2011 AMS

Tokinaga, H., Y. Tanimoto, S.-P. Xie, T. Sampe, H. Tomita, and H. Ichikawa, 2009: Ocean frontal effects on the vertical development of clouds over the western North Pacific: In situ and satellite observations. J. Climate, 22, 4241-4260. [Article] ©2009 AMS

Honors

  • The Young Scientists’ Prize of "Commendations for Science and Technology” from the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2015.
  • The Okada prize from the Oceanographic Society of Japan, 2013.
  • The Yamamoto-Shyono Medal for the 2012 Journal of Climate paper entitled "Regional patterns of tropical Indo-Pacific climate change: Evidence of the Walker Circulation weakening", Meteorological Society of Japan, 2012. [Award Citation in Japanese]