Ocean Circulation and Climate
The ocean plays a crucial role in determining global and regional climate. Yet our ability to predict the ocean's response to change is still limited. This talk will review the ways in which the ocean circulation is important in setting the conditions of the atmosphere in which we live. It will then explore the changes we might expect as a result of increased greenhouse gases, and the ways in which these may feed back on our climate. Open questions about the ocean's response to change will be discussed, along with the challenges that make it difficult to observe and model the ocean, and some of the current research under way in the Physical Oceanography group at the University of Oxford.
The slides from the presentation can be downloaded below. Unfortunately we will not be able to show the film of this talk due to technical difficulties with the recording. We apologise for any disappointment.
Download the presentation slides
Speaker
Helen Johnson (University of Oxford)
Biography
Helen Johnson grew up in the glass-making and rugby league town of St. Helens in north west England. She studied Physics and Meteorology at the University of Reading, graduating in 1997, and then worked as a research assistant in the Physical Oceanography group at Massachusettes Institute of Technology, USA, where she developed a fascination for the oceans and their role in the climate system. She returned to the UK to do a PhD in the Meteorology Department at the University of Reading, on the subject of the thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic Ocean and its adjustment to change. As a postdoctoral researcher she then spent two and a half years at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada, working on the dynamics of smaller scale ocean processes. Returning to the UK in 2005 she took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the University of Reading, to study the interaction between the polar oceans and the Atlantic. Now based in the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Oxford, she is engaged in theoretical studies, numerical modelling, and ship-based fieldwork, with the goal of understanding how ocean processes at both ends of the globe affect the large scale ocean circulation and climate.
www.earth.ox.ac.uk/people/profiles/academic/helenj
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