Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

  • Match, Aaron (‘17 - ‘19)

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    Aaron Match is a Ph.D. student in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. Aaron studies the global circulation of Earth’s atmosphere, with a focus on how interactions among radiation, dynamics, and chemistry lead to variability in the stratosphere. The stratosphere is a stably stratified layer of the atmosphere extending from approximately 15-50 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, containing Earth’s ozone layer. The stratosphere has undergone significant changes over the past few decades, including decreases in ozone concentrations, temperature, and water vapor. These changes can be thought of as the response to forcings by major volcanic eruptions, ozone depletion, greenhouse gas changes, and natural variability, yet there remains uncertainty in the forcings as well as the observed changes themselves. Aaron seeks to apply understanding of the stratospheric response to different forcings from theory and idealized climate model simulations to observational records from satellites and reanalysis datasets in order to advance theoretical understanding of the stratospheric response to forcings, gain insights into the stratospheric dynamics of idealize climate models, and constrain observed stratospheric variability. Advances in the understanding of how particular forcings impact the stratosphere may benefit climate model simulations of past and future variability as well as projections of the impacts of proposed stratospheric aerosol geoengineering. Outside of stratospheric dynamics, Aaron likes poring over science communication blogs and taking weekend bike trips to the Pine Barrens.

  • Schlunegger, Sarah (‘17 - ‘19)

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    Sarah Schlunegger is a PhD Student in the Program of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, advised by Prof. Jorge Sarmiento. Her work uses Earth System Models to predict the timing, sequence and inter-dependence of emerging anthropogenic signals in the ocean, with a focus on the ocean’s acquisition of anthropogenic carbon and heat. The ocean provides a climate service by absorbing the atmosphere’s excess carbon and heat but at a cost, namely acidification and warming which deteriorates marine habitats. Sarah’s primary research goal is to identify when and where changes in these heat/carbon sinks and their resulting impacts will be detectable in the ocean.

  • Persad, Geeta (‘11 - ‘13)

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    Aerosols are one of the major stumbling blocks in predicting future climate change. Both their direct interaction with solar radiation and their indirect impact via modification of cloud properties give aerosols the potential to significantly alter the Earth’s energy balance and hydrological cycle.

    Geeta is interested in using computer modeling and observational resources to provide a comprehensive picture of the large-scale impacts of aerosols on climate, particularly their effect on precipitation. How have aerosols impacted the surface energy budget in the past, and how can we expect them to do so in the future as aerosol emissions change with the evolving energy culture? And what potential does this have to alter precipitation patterns, such as the South Asian monsoon, that affect millions of people?

  • Ocko, Illissa (‘10 - ‘11)

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    The Arctic is a remote, desolate region, seemingly far away from human influence. However, during the 1970s, large amounts of anthropogenically-emitted particles were detected in the Arctic atmosphere, inferring that long-range transport of pollution could harm even the most pristine parts of the globe.

    These pollutants can drastically affect the Arctic climate, either directly by scattering or absorbing sunlight, or indirectly by changing microphysical cloud properties, snow albedo, etc. My research addresses this process, by using climate models to trace aerosols as they are emitted from mid-latitudes, transported to the Arctic, and interact with radiation and clouds.

  • Majkut, Joseph (‘11 - ‘13)

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    Joe’s recent research has focused on estimating the historical air-sea flux of carbon dioxide, particularly anthropogenic carbon. In the last 30 years a lot has been learned about what the average flux into the ocean has been, but assessing trends and variability in the signal is much harder. Currently, making a good estimate of where the flux may be changing is not possible. Joe is using a combination of ocean circulation models and statistical methods to extract as much information as possible out of the available measurements and create precise estimates of the flux and the associated uncertainties.

  • Lloyd, Ian (‘09 - ‘11)

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    The focus of Ian’s research is on the interaction between hurricanes and the climate system under global warming, for three major areas.

    • The first area is ocean-atmosphere interaction associated with hurricanes; in particular, the influence of oceanic heat content on hurricane intensity, which could have important consequences for changes in hurricane activity under global warming scenarios.
    • The second is the influence of hurricane-induced feedbacks on the climate system, via both ocean and atmosphere.
    • The final area is large-scale controls on tropical cyclone activity by the climate system under global warming, using newly developed high-resolution models at GFDL.

  • Hill, Spencer (‘12 - ‘13)

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    I am a Ph.D. student in the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at Princeton University, where I research tropical atmospheric circulations in present day and how they respond to imposed perturbations. Please see my Research page for more information. I am in my 5th year of study, am advised by Dr. Yi Ming, and will defend my thesis on August 2nd, 2016.

    In September 2016, I will start a postdoctoral position working with Simona Bordoni of CalTech and Jonathan Mitchell of UCLA and Westmont College working on monsoon theories.

    I am also interested in the Open Science and Free / Open Source Software movements, scientific programming using the Python language and Emacs Org-Mode, and the links between science and aesthetics/culture. Please see my Resources and Programming pages for more information.

  • Philander, George

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    The ocean is curiously cold. Even in regions where surface temperatures are at a maximum, the average temperature of a water column is barely above the freezing point. The reason is the shallowness of the thermocline, the interface between the layer of warm surface water and the much colder deep abyss. So shallow is the thermocline that a change in its slope, because of a change in the winds, alters sea surface temperature patterns. Those patterns in turn affect the winds. This circular argument – the winds are both the cause and consequence of surface temperature changes – imply unstable ocean-atomsphere interactions that give rise to phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña. One of my research interests concerns those interactions.

    Why is the ocean so cold? What processes determine the thermal structure of the ocean? The answer is of vital importance for a variety of reasons, including the possibility that a deepening of the thermocline, in response to global warming for example, can result in permanent El Niño conditions. We are developing models to explore this possibility, but how will we check the results? Some of the very different climates the Earth has experienced during its long history probably involved changes in the thermal structure of the ocean. (The Earth was far colder than it is today during the last Ice Ages some 20,000 years ago. It was far warmer than today some three million years ago.) These are the reasons for my interest in paleo-climates.

  • Manabe, Syukuro

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    In the early 1960’s, Manabe and colleagues developed a radiative-convective model of the atmosphere, and explored the role of greenhouse gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide and ozone in maintaining and changing the thermal structure of the atmosphere. This was the beginning of the long-term research on global warming, which Manabe has continued until now in collaborating with the staff members of Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) of NOAA.

    In the late 1960’s, Kirk Bryan and Manabe began to develop a general circulation model of the coupled atmosphere-ocean-land system, which eventually became a very powerful tool for the simulation of global warming. Furthermore, the team have realized that a coupled model simulates well the low frequency variability of climate. This encouraged them to use a coupled model for exploring not only global warming but also unforced, natural variability of climate from seasonal to centennial time scales.

    The analysis of deep sea sediments and continental ice sheets indicates that the Earth’s climate has fluctuated greatly during the geological past. Throughout Manabe’s career, past climate changes have posed many challenging questions, which he has tried to answer using climate models with various complexity.