Internships

Edward Zhang ’24

Major

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Project Title

A Biologically-based Analysis of Climatic Trends in Marine Heat Waves

Presentation Link

View Edward's Presentation

Certificate(s): Environmental Studies

I investigated how trends in the oxygen levels of subtropical oceans change with increasing temperatures. Increased variance in oxygen levels with increasing temperature was first observed in the shallow waters of the Caribbean. This is a concerning trend as severe increased oxygen variance may profoundly impact the survival of marine species. I investigated trends in oxygen levels along the Australian coastline using ocean datasets from over 20 years. I first extracted and cleaned the data. I then performed a statistical regression analysis, and found six locations that exhibited this same concerning pattern of increasing oxygen variance with increased temperatures. Then, I performed the same analysis on outputs from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Earth System Model version 4, a climate simulation model. I found it interesting to compare the results from real-world data to model data, and learned that they require different methods of analysis and often produce different results. Through my project, I learned to analyze data using MATLAB and Python, and explored the strengths and limitations of both programs. These skills will be invaluable for my future research projects, and have given me the confidence to pursue research that involves analyzing large amounts of data.