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Areas of Study

Members of the faculty in all five disciplines carry out climate-related research. Potential applicants are encouraged to explore research carried out by faculty in each discipline to assess which of the five disciplines is best suited for their academic and interests. Applicants are encouraged to contact faculty in their area of interest.

Examples of areas of climate covered by JP Faculty and students include:

Dynamics of the Climate System (Ocean, Atmosphere, Cryosphere)

  • Coupled global water cycle and ocean
  • Global and regional climate modeling and future climate predictions
  • Arctic/Antarctic climate change
  • El Ninõ-Southern Oscillation and tropical climate
  • Interactions such as ocean/ice, ocean/atmosphere and air-sea
  • Droughts in the past and modern climate
  • Polar Ice Sheet mass balance
  • Glacier dynamics
  • Sea-ice

Climate Reconstructions/Paleoclimate

  • Ocean circulation in past climates
  • Paleoclimate reconstruction from ice cores, ocean and lake sediments, corals, and tree rings

Climate and Marine/Terrestrial Ecosystems

  • Ocean climate variability and marine productivity, including fisheries
  • Climate change and marine mammals
  • Terrestrial water resources
  • Human health

Carbon Cycle and Biogeochemistry

  • Oceanic uptake and release of greenhouse gases
  • Environmental sensitivities of biogeochemical cycles and marine ecoystems
  • Ocean acidification
  • Riverine inputs to marine systems

Tools/techniques/data used:

  • Shipboard, sea-ice, glacier, land based measurements
  • Remote sensing
  • Experiments in water tanks
  • Numerical modeling (simple to full GCMs)
  • Cores (corals, trees, sediments, ice)
  • Theoretical framework
  • Observational networks (buoy, radar, meteorological stations…)

As a climate student in the Joint Program you may find yourself:

  • Deploying instruments and making measurements on a rolling ship at sea
  • Investigating Adelaide penguins in Antarctica
  • Deploying an autonomous underwater vehicle next to a Greenland glacier
  • Analyzing dozens of IPCC climate models to define the past and predict the future
  • Coring tropical lagoon sediment to reconstruct past hurricane activity
  • Sampling Caribbean corals using SCUBA
  • Running fine-scale ocean models to understand regional dynamics and validate with observations