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Participants of the ENSO Winter School 2025
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.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of key milestones in ENSO research, including the work of Klaus Wyrtki, the late renowned oceanographer from UH Mānoa. His groundbreaking studies helped shape modern understanding of El Niño and its impacts on weather patterns worldwide.
Over the nine-day program, participants engaged in morning lectures covering ENSO fundamentals, followed by student-led discussions on influential scientific papers. Afternoons featured student presentations, hands-on training and collaborative research projects. The curriculum provided participants a more thorough look at ENSO through real-world data analysis, modeling techniques and forecasting methods.
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“This year’s ENSO Winter School was an incredible opportunity for students to engage directly with leading researchers and gain hands-on experience in ENSO science,” said Christina Karamperidou, chair of the school’s scientific organizing committee, and professor and associate department chair in UH Mānoa’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences. “Seeing participants from around the world collaborate and deepen their understanding of climate variability was truly inspiring. By hosting this vibrant community of scientists and future research leaders, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa reinforces its reputation as a central hub for cutting-edge ENSO research.”
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“Participating in the ENSO Winter School has not only deepened my understanding of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation but also broadened my perspective on nature and its dynamics, as well as strengthened my professional network,” said Roger Manay-Torres from the Instituto Geofísico del Perú. “This experience has been incredibly valuable, both academically and professionally, and it has far exceeded my expectations.”
Regina R. Rodrigues, a professor of physical oceanography at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil was one of the lecturers, and talked about ENSO’s impacts on weather extremes, etc.
“It was a great experience to spend more than a week with students, earlier career researchers and many of the most prominent experts on ENSO,” Rodrigues said. “I learned more about past ENSO from paleoclimate records and about future ENSO from climate projections.”
people sitting in a classroom
Jérôme Vialard, a senior scientist at Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Paris, added, “I have worked on ENSO for almost 30 years, but found the lectures of other instructors useful. Some refreshed my memory, and some taught me new things on topics I know less about, such as paleo-climate or machine learning.”
The school was supported by UH Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, International and U.S. CLIVAR, IAPSO/IUGG, CIMAR and the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research.
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