LuAnn Thompson | |
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Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution |
Scientific career | |
Institutions | University of Washington |
Thesis | Flow over finite isolated topography (1991) |
LuAnn Thompson is the Walters Endowed Professor at the University of Washington. She is known for her work in modeling the movement of heat and chemicals via ocean currents.
Thompson grew up in northern California and was interested in astrophysics. [1] She received a B.S. in physics from the University of California, Davis (1983), an M.A. in physics from Harvard University (1986), and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1990). Following her Ph.D. she moved to the University of Washington first as a post-doctoral fellow, and then she joined the faculty in 1993. She was promoted to professor in 2010 and named the Walters Professor of Oceanography in 2016. [2]
Thompson's early research developed models of water flow [3] and used laboratory experiments to examine the production of eddies. [4] Subsequent research examined the factors controlling sea surface height, [5] [6] which she measures using data from satellites, [7] and the physical conditions in the ocean that lead to the formation of water masses. [8] [9] Through collaborative projects she has examined how changes in water circulation alter the oxygen levels in seawater [10] [11] and how marine heatwaves will impact marine ecosystems. [12] [13] In ongoing policy discussions, Thompson seeks to use science to support discussions on climate change [14] [15] and analyzes factors limiting promotion of women in science. [16] [17] [18]
Thompson was named a fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2014. [19]
Warren White is a professor emeritus, and a former Research Oceanographer at the Marine Biological Research Division at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
Jonathan Michael Gregory is a climate modeller working on mechanisms of global and large-scale change in climate and sea level on multidecadal and longer timescales at the Met Office and the University of Reading.
The Florida Current is a thermal ocean current that flows from the Straits of Florida around the Florida Peninsula and along the southeastern coast of the United States before joining the Gulf Stream Current near Cape Hatteras. Its contributing currents are the Loop Current and the Antilles Current. The current was discovered by Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León in 1513.
Parameterization in a weather or climate model is a method of replacing processes that are too small-scale or complex to be physically represented in the model by a simplified process. This can be contrasted with other processes—e.g., large-scale flow of the atmosphere—that are explicitly resolved within the models. Associated with these parameterizations are various parameters used in the simplified processes. Examples include the descent rate of raindrops, convective clouds, simplifications of the atmospheric radiative transfer on the basis of atmospheric radiative transfer codes, and cloud microphysics. Radiative parameterizations are important to both atmospheric and oceanic modeling alike. Atmospheric emissions from different sources within individual grid boxes also need to be parameterized to determine their impact on air quality.
Adrian Edmund Gill FRS was an Australian meteorologist and oceanographer best known for his textbook Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics. Gill was born in Melbourne, Australia, and worked at Cambridge, serving as Senior Research Fellow from 1963 to 1984. His father was Edmund Gill, geologist, palaeontologist and curator at the National Museum of Victoria.
James C. McWilliams is a professor at the UCLA Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.
North Pacific Intermediate Water (NPIW) is cold, moderately low salinity water mass that originates in the mixed water region (MWR) between the Kuroshio and Oyashio waters just east of Japan. Examination of NPIW at stations just east of the MWR indicates that the mixed waters in the MWR are the origin of the newest NPIW. The new NPIW ‘‘formed’’ in the MWR is a mixture of relatively fresh, recently ventilated Oyashio water coming from the subpolar gyre, and more saline, older Kuroshio water. The mixing process results in a salinity minimum and also in rejuvenation of the NPIW layer in the subtropical gyre due to the Oyashio input.
Mode water is defined as a particular type of water mass, which is nearly vertically homogeneous. Its vertical homogeneity is caused by the deep vertical convection in winter. The first term to describe this phenomenon is 18° water, which was used by Valentine Worthington to describe the isothermal layer in the northern Sargasso Sea cool to a temperature of about 18 °C each winter. Then Masuzawa introduced the subtropical mode water concept to describe the thick layer of temperature 16–18 °C in the northwestern North Pacific subtropical gyre, on the southern side of the Kuroshio Extension. The terminology mode water was extended to the thick near-surface layer north of the Subantarctic Front by McCartney, who identified and mapped the properties of the Subantarctic mode water (SAMW). After that, McCartney and Talley then applied the term subpolar mode water (SPMW) to the thick near-surface mixed layers in the North Atlantic’s subpolar gyre.
The Tasman Front is a relatively warm water east-flowing surface current and thermal boundary that separates the Coral Sea to the north and the Tasman Sea to the south.
Trevor John McDougallFAGU is a physical oceanographer specialising in ocean mixing and the thermodynamics of seawater. He is Emeritus Scientia Professor of Ocean Physics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and is Past President of the International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO) of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics.
CICE is a computer model that simulates the growth, melt and movement of sea ice. It has been integrated into many coupled climate system models as well as global ocean and weather forecasting models and is often used as a tool in Arctic and Southern Ocean research. CICE development began in the mid-1990s by the United States Department of Energy (DOE), and it is currently maintained and developed by a group of institutions in North America and Europe known as the CICE Consortium. Its widespread use in earth system science in part owes to the importance of sea ice in determining Earth's planetary albedo, the strength of the global thermohaline circulation in the world's oceans, and in providing surface boundary conditions for atmospheric circulation models, since sea ice occupies a significant proportion (4-6%) of earth's surface. CICE is a type of cryospheric model.
Atlantification is the increasing influence of Atlantic water in the Arctic. Warmer and saltier Atlantic water is extending its reach northward into the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic Ocean is becoming warmer and saltier and sea-ice is disappearing as a result. The process can be seen on the figure on the far right, where the sea surface temperature change in the past 50 years is shown, which is up to 5 degrees in some places. This change in the Arctic climate is most prominent in the Barents Sea, a shallow shelf sea north of Scandinavia, where sea-ice is disappearing faster than in any other Arctic region, impacting the local and global ecosystem.
Sarah Gille is a physical oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography known for her research on the role of the Southern Ocean in the global climate system.
Mary-Louise Elizabeth Timmermans is a marine scientist known for her work on the Arctic Ocean. She is the Damon Wells Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Yale University.
Phyllis Jean Stabeno is a physical oceanographer known for her research on the movement of water in polar regions. She has led award-winning research projects in the Arctic and was noted for a distinguished scientific career by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Lisa M. Beal is a professor at the University of Miami known for her work on the Agulhas Current. She is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans.
Rebecca Woodgate is a professor at the University of Washington known for her work on ocean circulation in polar regions.
Relative wind stress is a shear stress that is produced by wind blowing over the surface of the ocean, or another large body of water. Relative wind stress is related to wind stress but takes the difference between the surface ocean current velocity and wind velocity into account. The units are Newton per meter squared or Pascal . Wind stress over the ocean is important as it is a major source of kinetic energy input to the ocean which in turn drives large scale ocean circulation. The use of relative wind stress instead of wind stress, where the ocean current is assumed to be stationary, reduces the stress felt over the ocean in models. This leads to a decrease in the calculation of power input into the ocean of 20–35% and thus, results in a different simulation of the large scale ocean circulation.
The Agulhas Leakage is an inflow of anomalously warm and saline water from the Indian Ocean into the South Atlantic due to the limited latitudinal extent of the African continent compared to the southern extension of the subtropical super gyre in the Indian Ocean. The process occurs during the retroflection of the Agulhas Current via shedding of anticyclonic Agulhas Rings, cyclonic eddies and direct inflow. The leakage contributes to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) by supplying its upper limb, which has direct climate implications.
Irminger Rings (IRs) are mesoscale ocean eddies that are formed off the West coast of Greenland and travel southwestwards through the Labrador Sea. Most IRs are anti-cyclonic. There is considerable interest in researching IRs, because they have been hypothesized to influence deep convection in the Labrador sea, and therefore the formation of deep water.