Lauren Santi, 2018, Geosciences

Lauren Santi ’18

This summer I worked with data from Argo profiling floats and from coupled climate models developed by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) in Princeton. The goal of the internship was to characterize the effects of global warming on ocean oxygen levels and to assess the ability of current models to correctly predict oxygen levels in the Southern Ocean, a region that is poorly understood when compared to other ocean regions. I spent the summer working in Sayre Hall on the Forrestal Campus, where I used MATLAB to interpret this model data and to compare it to the recently recalibrated observational Argo data. I then evaluated the mechanisms that could drive changes in dissolved oxygen in a climate change scenario, including temperature, circulation, and biological effects. A highlight of this project was working alongside scientists and oceanographers whose research has completely revolutionized the way we think about the Southern Ocean. Although I am already a declared geosciences major, this internship not only reaffirmed my decision to study geosciences, it also gave me confidence in my abilities to succeed as a STEM major.