One study showed 20 minutes of yoga could
significantly improve brain functioning, another that a quick nap would seriously boost memory, while a third suggested that just shy of an hour of
work followed by around a 15 - minute pause was the ideal
work pattern.
Mike's
work, like that of previous award winners, is diverse, and includes pioneering and highly cited
work in time series analysis (an elegant use of Thomson's multitaper spectral analysis approach to detect spatiotemporal oscillations in the climate record and methods for smoothing temporal data), decadal climate variability (the term «Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation» or «AMO» was coined by Mike in an interview with Science's Richard Kerr about a paper he had published with Tom Delworth of GFDL showing evidence in both climate model simulations and observational data for a 50 - 70 year oscillation in the climate system;
significantly Mike also published
work with Kerry Emanuel in 2006 showing that the AMO concept has been overstated as regards its role in 20th century tropical Atlantic SST changes, a finding recently reaffirmed by a study published in Nature), in showing how changes in radiative forcing from volcanoes can affect ENSO, in examining the role of solar variations in explaining the
pattern of the Medieval Climate Anomaly and Little Ice Age, the relationship between the climate changes of past centuries and phenomena such as Atlantic tropical cyclones and global sea level, and even a bit of
work in atmospheric chemistry (an analysis of beryllium - 7 measurements).