JISAO is a NOAA sponsored joint institute that operates between the University of Washington and the NOAA Alaska Fishery Science Center (AFSC), the Marine Mammal Laboratory (MML), the NOAA Northwest Fishery Science Center (NWFSC), and the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL).

When seeking a postdoc appointment at JISAO, you are strongly encouraged to provide a letter of support from a research scientist at AFSC, JISAO, MML, NWFSC, or PMEL and/or a UW faculty member in a relevant department.

A list of potential mentors and their research interests can be found below. This list contains those interested in working with postdocs but is not inclusive; mentors at the local NOAA centers/laboratories or at the UW not on this list may be contacted as potential mentors.

Tom Ackerman, Atmospheric Sciences

Becky Alexander, Atmospheric Sciences

Our research examines how tropospheric aerosol and oxidant chemistry varies over time and space.  The time scales we consider range from seasonal to glacial-interglacial variability on the global scale.  We aim to answer two fundamental questions in atmospheric chemistry: 1) How do the formation pathways of sulfate and nitrate aerosols vary over space and time, and what are the implications for atmospheric chemistry and climate? 2) How has the oxidation capacity of the atmosphere changed in response to both anthropogenic and climate forcing, and what are the implications for climate feedback processes via the impact on the concentration of reduced trace gases (e.g. CH4) that affect the distribution of energy in the climate system? The main approaches that we use to answer the above questions are: 1) Measuring the isotopic composition of sulfate and nitrate from aerosol, water, snow, and ice core samples (see our laboratory facilities). 2) Modeling using global three-dimensional models of atmospheric chemistry and climate (mostly GEOS-Chem). Please see our web page for more information about ongoing research projects.

Simone Alin, NOAA

While I am broadly interested in multiple stressor ocean change and its effects on marine ecosystems, human health, and coastal economies, my research focuses on carbon cycling and acidification in the California Current Ecosystem, Salish Sea, and northern Pacific Ocean.  I am fortunate to be engaged with outstanding collaborators across many agencies and institutions in the U.S. and internationally on projects including coastal ocean observations, global ocean data management and synthesis, novel data and model visualizations, new approaches to communicating about ocean change with diverse audiences, experimental work on organismal impacts of ocean change, and regional vulnerability assessment.   

Kimberly Andrews, JISAO

My research explores questions about how environmental variation influences marine biological diversity over space and time, both within species and across communities of species. I use cutting edge techniques that rely on high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies, such as metabarcoding, RADseq, and multiplex PCR amplicon sequencing. Metabarcoding provides a way to identify the species present in marine communities using plankton samples and environmental DNA (eDNA) water or sediment samples, with much less time and expense than morphology-based techniques such as picking and sorting from plankton or trawl samples. RADseq and amplicon sequencing enable high-resolution characterization of population structure and genetic diversity, and provide insight into how species adapt to different environments at the genomic level. Information from this work helps us understand how individual species and entire ecosystems will respond to environmental change and fishing pressure.

Diego Arcas, NOAA

Virginia Armbrust, Oceanography

Tim Bates, JISAO

Our research examines the effects of atmospheric particles on climate and air quality.  Most of our research is carried out on research vessels looking at both naturally produced and anthropogenic aerosols in the atmosphere http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/data/.  Our current focus has been on ocean derived aerosols http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/publications/pdfs/2012/bates_seasweep_2012JD017588.pdf although we are moving forward with measurements from unmanned aerial systems http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/publications/pdfs/2013/amt-6-2115-2013.pdf.

David Battisti, Atmospheric Sciences

David Beauchamp, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Salmon experience a broad range of habitats and associated environmental-ecological conditions as they complete their life cycle through freshwater, estuarine, and marine systems. Salmon production is currently limited by a variety of factors that affect survival, especially during early marine periods which are believed to determine adult recruitment. The nature and magnitude of these effects are expected to change with changing climate, land and water use. Size-selective marine mortality is a prevalent feature in the dynamics of anadromous salmonid populations. We are interested in exploring how top-down and bottom-up processes vary among life stages to create critical periods that influence growth and size-selective survival to adulthood. We can address these topics through a combination of retrospective analyses of data and archival samples, direct field sampling, and modeling. Our ultimate goal is to develop mechanistically-based models that help diagnose existing limitations and predict responses by salmon and their associated food webs to climatic and anthropogenic changes. These questions are prevalent throughout the geographic range of Pacific salmon and steelhead, and opportunities exist to either focus on localized systems like Puget Sound or conduct comparative analyses and syntheses across multiple systems (e.g., California Current, Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea, Inland Seas, etc.).

Cecilia Bitz, Atmospheric Sciences

I am interested in ice and climate interactions in the present, past, and future. My group mostly uses climate models, from simple reduced models to full-blown earth system models. I have also done a little field work in the Antarctic on the interactions of ice shelves, sea ice, and climate. I work on polar climates at both poles, and I often consider interactions with the global climate system. Please check out my web site if you think you might be interested in working in my group at http://www.atmos.uw.edu/~bitz and email me.

Nick Bond, JISAO

The Office of the Washington State Climatologist (OWSC) collects, disseminates and interprets climate data. It serves as a source of climate and weather information for state and local decision makers and agencies involved with drought, flooding, climate change and related issues. The research carried out by OWSC includes consideration of applied topics (marine ecosystems, human health, etc.) related to the climate. More information is available at climate.washington.edu.

Trevor Branch, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

I focus on solving biological problems through data synthesis and mathematical models and work on a variety of research projects, including: assessing the global status and future directions of marine fisheries, testing hypotheses about how fisheries affect marine food webs using stock assessments, catches, and surveys, and detecting factors that influence patterns in fishery development; the human side of fisheries, including fishing behavior and fleet dynamics, especially as related to the effect of individual transferable quotas (“catch shares”) on the environment, target fisheries, discards, and quota utilization; research on large whales, especially blue whales but also minkes and humpbacks, which has led to papers on abundance estimation, changes in population size over time, maps of occurrence and the separation of subspecies; modeling herring in Prince William Sound, delving into explanations for their collapse and failure to recover; and the effects of ocean acidification on marine seafood; how overlooking opportunistic depletion can lead to extinction in multispecies systems.

My graduate students and postdocs are currently working on modeling herring in Prince William Sound, improving Bayesian convergence time for fisheries stock assessments, developing new methods for data-limited stock assessments, examining the effects of catch shares on fisheries and ecosystems, assessing the status of blue whales in the Pacific and estimating the frequency of black swan events in ecological data.

Chris Bretherton, Atmospheric Sciences

My research group studies cloud formation and turbulence and improves how they are simulated in global climate and weather forecast models. Our research includes participating in field experiments and observational analyses (most recently the 2015 CSET and 2018 SOCRATES campaigns studying marine boundary layer clouds and their interaction with aerosols in the Northeast Pacific and Southern Oceans), three-dimensional modeling of fluid flow in and around fields of clouds, and understanding how clouds will respond to and feedback on climate change. My group is also exploring the application of machine learning to improved parameterizations of cloud processes and cumulus convection in climate models. I would be excited to mentor potential postdoctoral fellows in any of these areas, particularly in machine learning parameterization and applications of global cloud-resolving modeling.

David Butterfield, JISAO

I am interested in interdisciplinary research questions with fluid chemistry as the central focus. Most of my work deals with submarine volcanoes and hydrothermal systems, including sub-seafloor processes related to magma degassing, hydrothermal water-rock reactions, microbial activity and mineral formation. My lab has a specialized hydrothermal fluid and particle sampling instrument for coordinated studies of chemistry and microbiology in hydrothermal vents or methane seeps. The instrument includes in-situ sensors for T, oxygen, and pH, and a module capable of incubating samples under in-situ hydrothermal conditions. My chemistry lab analyzes many dissolved species (major, minor, and trace elements, as well as dissolved gases). Researchers with expertise and interest in geochemical modeling, statistics and data analysis, analytical chemistry, in-situ sensors, microbial ecology, and environmental DNA are encouraged to apply.

Brendan Carter, JISAO

Manuel Castellote, JISAO

Bonnie Chang, JISAO

Wei Cheng, JISAO

I am a physical oceanographer studying ocean-sea ice-atmosphere interaction on multiple scales ranging from multi-decadal to seasonal, and from global ocean to regional seas. The goal of my research is to understand how the ocean responds to surface forcing mechanisms, and in turn, regulates the atmospheric and sea-ice processes, and also the marine ecosystem. I use a suite of tools including earth system modeling, regional ocean biophysical models, in-situ data collected from the sea, and satellite remote sensing products. My research portfolio is diverse and includes the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), Arctic sea ice predictability, and marine ecosystem and fisheries response to environmental changes in the Eastern Bering Sea, to give a few examples. At NOAA/PMEL, I work within the EcoFOCI group (linking to the FOCI web page) where cross-disciplinary work is conducted.

Andy Chiodi, JISAO

Meghan Cronin, NOAA

Saildrone are autonomous surface vehicles that I believe will revolutionize oceanography. Their suite of surface instrumentation is similar to what we have on the NOAA Ocean Climate Station surface moorings — sensors to compute the air-sea exchanges of heat, momentum, moisture, and carbon dioxide. However the Saildrone wind sensor measures all three components of wind (u,v,w) at 10 Hz and thus potentially can be used to to directly measure wind stress. Likewise the IMU on the Saildrone’s ADCP sensor is of such high quality that we expect to be able to measure wave properties. Be on the leading edge of oceanography. Propose a project that will demonstrate the quality of these measurements and how they can be used to investigate air-sea interaction in regions extending from the equator to the Arctic. Be part of NASA SPURS-2 and TPOS-2020 (tpos2020.org).  For more information, see our OCS Saildrone webpage.  If this is of interest, please contact me.

Eric D’Asaro, APL/Oceanography

John Delaney, Oceanography

Jody Deming, Oceanography

Allan Devol, Oceanography

Timothy Essington, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

My lab focuses on food web interactions involving fish in marine, estuarine and freshwater habitats, and applications for sustainable fisheries. My lab conducts work in a wide range of marine ecosystems from high seas pelagic systems to the inland seas of Puget Sound. We look at links between fishery governance (e.g. rights-based fishing) and ecological conditions, and attempt to understand the potential conflicts between fisheries as they target species that occupy distinct positions in food webs. Work in my lab tends to be quantitative, involving modeling and statistical analysis of complex data sets. We conduct fieldwork and collect data, particularly in Puget Sound where we are working to understand the structure of the food web, how it varies in time and space and how it is impacted by climate change and other anthropogenic influences, such as hypoxia.

Richard Feely, NOAA/PMEL

My research interests lie in carbon cycling and ocean acidification in open-ocean and coastal regions, specifically concerning mechanisms controlling sources and sinks of anthropogenic CO₂ in the oceans, and impacts of CO₂ on marine ecosystems.

Dargan Frierson, Atmospheric Sciences

I’m most interested in studying responses of the climate system to global warming, and fundamental aspects of the general circulation of the atmosphere and the ocean.  For potential JISAO postdocs, I would suggest projects involving a simplified coupled atmosphere-ocean model that we’ve been running.  It has idealized basins, simplified atmospheric physics, and runs quickly so many long simulations can be performed.  I’d be interested in using it to continue studying the role of ocean circulation on determining rainfall patterns in the tropics and extratropics, and in studying ocean heat uptake with global warming: its patterns and influence on large-scale hydrologic and dynamical responses to warming.

Qiang Fu, Atmospheric Sciences

Professor Fu’s research areas are in atmospheric radiation and cloud processes, atmospheric circulation changes associated with global warming and their impacts on clouds and water vapor and the feedback to the climate system,  the Brewer-Dobson circulation, tropical tropopause layer (TTL) and the temperature structure and changes in TTL, terrestrial aridity changes.

Frederick Goetz, Northwest Fisheries Science Center

I am a Research Biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center and the Director of the Program on Marine Finfish and Shellfish Biology at NOAA’s Manchester Research Station.  We are conducting research in collaboration with faculty at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences on the restoration of native shellfish species such as the Olympia Oyster and Pinto Abalone within the Salish Sea.  Using Next-Generation Sequencing platforms, we are assessing extant and introduced populations of shellfish within Puget Sound to understand the impact of climate change and restoration efforts being conducted by NGOs including the Puget Sound Restoration Fund (https://restorationfund.org/).  This research involves a team of biologists utilizing resources from NOAA, the University of Washington, the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, and the Kenneth K. Chew Center for Shellfish Research and Restoration.

Greg Hakim, Atmospheric Sciences

Many of the most important outstanding problems in Earth system science involve coupling between the atmosphere and the ocean over long timescales. Our research activity on this central theme involves two main foci: climate reconstruction using paleo-proxy data, and decadal predictions of climate variability. These problems are linked by the need to fuse information from models and observations, and by techniques used to exploit that information for understanding the evolution of the coupled system. We use ensemble approaches to these problems, and a hierarchy approach to test ideas from simple low-order models up to next-generation Earth-system models.

Lorenz Hauser, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

My research program focuses on the population structure, local adaptation and dispersal processes in marine species. Specifically, we have been investigating patterns of genetic differentiation in Pacific cod and Pacific herring, especially in relation to oceanographic, environmental and biological barriers. Recently, we also work on genetic risk assessment models for shellfish aquaculture, based in part on physical processes in the marine environment. We also work on resolving the demographic basis of recent northward shifts in distribution, that is, whether those shifts represent distribution changes of a single population or the increase of northern and decline of southern populations. Much of our work is in collaboration with scientists from federal (NOAA) and state (WDFW) agencies.

Ray Hilborn, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Laura Hinkelman, JISAO

Dr. Hinkelman is a research scientist at the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean of the University of Washington. Her research spans a range of applications of atmospheric radiative transfer. Much of her research to date has focused on the Earth’s energy budget, long-term trends in surface insolation, and the effect of clouds on atmospheric radiative transfer. Her current projects concentrate on practical application of satellite and ground-based irradiance data: evaluating the use of satellite radiative flux products in snowmelt models; examining the variability of surface insolation as a function of space, time, and cloud conditions for application to solar energy production; and evaluation of satellite radiation data products. Dr. Hinkelman has worked extensively with ground-based solar flux measurements, Monte Carlo radiative transfer, and a wide range of satellite data sets.

Robert Holzworth, Earth and Space Sciences

John Horne, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

My research focuses on distributions and dynamics of aquatic animals in ecosystems ranging from freshwater lakes to the open ocean. We study zooplankton through marine mammals and birds, with a bias towards fish, currently spanning a latitudinal range of 71^oN to 61^oS. Recent projects have examined scale-dependent spatiotemporal distributions of small pelagic fish, fish-seabird interactions in dynamic frontal areas, bio-physical coupling in polar environments, and developing metrics for biological monitoring at ocean observing systems and marine renewable energy sites. Projects typically combine field work with statistical analysis and/or computer modeling. Distribution and abundance data are obtained using active acoustic and direct sampling technologies that are deployed from vessels, or on moorings and bottom packages. Many of our projects contribute to the sustainable management of living marine resources.

John Incardona, Northwest Fisheries Science Center

The Ecotoxicology Program at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center designs and implements pollution research to guide NOAA’s mission to conserve and manage trust species, habitats, and ecosystems. The Program focuses on a wide diversity of toxic threats to coastal watersheds, estuaries, embayments, and nearshore marine environments, such as oil spills and stormwater runoff. Ecotox research serves many purposes. For example, these include characterizing risks to endangered species, evaluating the effectiveness of pollution control strategies, monitoring the success of habitat restoration projects, and identifying contaminants of emerging concern. I lead the Conservation Medicine group, which focuses on using biomedical approaches to understanding impacts of pollution to fish health and developing tools for assessing those impacts in both the laboratory and field. Research is therefore conducted across biological scales, from molecular biology to community ecology. Our group is highly collaborative, both within the NWFSC and also with external partners such as academic laboratories and other agencies. Lastly, research projects are developed to meet critical information gaps at the interface between science and environmental policy.

Anitra Ingalls, Oceanography

My lab group examines the chemical signatures of microorganisms with the goal of learning about the feedbacks between the global cycles of carbon and nitrogen and climate in the past, present and future. We use the tools of mass spectrometry based metabolomics and proteomics and collaborate broadly with molecular biologists and paleoceanographers to study the metabolic capabilities of microorganisms and the chemical tracers they leave behind. We are also interested in how organic compounds mediate microbe-microbe interactions and microbe-environment interactions. With a mix of fieldwork and lab studies, we work in diverse environments across the globe.

Lyatt Jeagle, Atmospheric Sciences

Lyatt Jaeglé is interested in understanding the chemistry of the natural atmosphere and its perturbations by human activities. Her group uses global and regional models to analyze ground-based, ship, aircraft, and satellite observations of atmospheric composition. Current research projects are focused on understanding emissions, chemical transformation, and transport of gases and particles in the earth’s atmosphere.

Dan Jaffe, Atmospheric Sciences

My team does observations and analysis to understand global atmospheric chemistry, along with local and regional sources of air pollution. We have operated the Mt. Bachelor Observatory for the past 15 years to examine long-range transport of pollution from Asia to North America. Recently our focus has shifted to examine the impacts on air quality from large wildfires which have significantly increased in the Pacific Northwest. Our team uses a variety of tools including own chemical observations (e.g. O₃, NOx, VOCs, aerosols, Hg, etc), along with other data, such as meteorological data, satellite data, chemical transport models, statistical modeling, GIS, etc.

Gregory Johnson, NOAA

Gregory Johnson is an Oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and an Affiliate Professor at UW’s School of Oceanography. He works on large-scale ocean circulation, water masses, and their variability; ocean dynamics; ocean-atmosphere interactions; and the ocean’s roles in climate. He is active in global repeat hydrography programs both national and international (http://www.go-ship.org/) and leads a group at PMEL contributing to the Argo program (https://floats.pmel.noaa.gov/).

Julie Keister, Oceanography

My research focuses on a variety of problems in biological oceanography and zooplankton ecology, particularly those related to how climate-driven environmental change interacts with biological processes to control zooplankton biogeography, diversity, community structure, and abundance. Interactions between the environment and zooplankton population structure, behavior (e.g., diel vertical migration), and growth ultimately control ecosystems including fish and other upper trophic level organisms. I work on these interdisciplinary projects using a combination of field collections, laboratory experiments, satellite data, and collaboration with modelers.

Carol Ladd, NOAA

EcoFOCI is involved in extensive field and modeling research in the Chukchi and western Beaufort Seas in the Arctic, the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. The goal of EcoFOCI is to understand how climate and other physical forcing influence the physical oceanography and ecosystems in these regions. One particular focus of my research has been on the influence of mesoscale eddies on ecosystem parameters. In situ and satellite observations, along with numerical modeling, have played roles in my research. Please see the EcoFOCI web page for more information.

Jessica Lundquist, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Professor Jessica Lundquist and the Mountain Hydrology research group investigate meteorology, snow, ecological, and runoff processes in complex terrain.  Examples of past research and publications can be found here:  http://depts.washington.edu/mtnhydr/  We are currently working on projects involving the remote sensing of snow surface temperatures and snow depth, on the best practices in merging this information with modeling, and on forest management and forest-snow interactions and would welcome postdoctoral researchers with interests in any of these areas.

Parker MacCready, Oceanography

Our most recent project is to create a daily forecast model of ocean circulation and carbon chemistry focused on Ocean Acidification in the NE Pacific and Salish Sea.  This will be used by shellfish growers, among others, to try to mitigate the threat of corrosive waters.  A former JISAO postdoc, Dr. Samantha Siedlecki, is part of the team, and we would very much like to bring in another postdoc.

Ryan McCabe, JISAO

I am a physical oceanographer focusing on processes that occur in coastal regions, with particular interests in issues relevant to ecosystems. My past work has spanned estuaries, coral reefs, and continental shelves. I am currently involved in a Pacific Arctic ecosystem project and a US West Coast harmful algal bloom project. I also collaborate closely with researchers at UW Oceanography, at NOAA PMEL, and at NOAA NWFSC. I use a combination of observations and models in my research and I encourage potential applicants interested in coastal ocean processes, whether purely physical or multidisciplinary, to contact me.

Michael McPhaden, NOAA

I study large scale ocean-interactions, ocean dynamics, and the oceans role in climate. My primary focus is on the tropics, with emphasis on El Nino and the Southern Oscillation, the monsoons, tropical Atlantic climate variability and related phenomena. I specialize in the analysis and interpretation of satellite and in situ data, in the context of theory and dynamical models, to improve understanding of processes at work in the climate system and how they may be affected by anthropogenically forced climate change.

Calvin Mordy, JISAO

Andrea Ogston, Oceanography

Ivonne Ortiz, JISAO

My work focuses on spatial approaches to ecosystem based fisheries management using a variety of models and statistical analysis: food web and ecosystem modeling centered on trophic interactions, climate-to-fish models that couple oceanography, lower trophic levels, fish and fisheries, as well as development of ecosystem indicators, and how they are impacted by climate and the environment -both in the past (hindcasts) and the near and long term future (seasonal and decadal forecasts). My interests follow three major routes: informing policy and management, integrated ecosystem studies, and science communication.  I collaborate closely with the Resource Ecology and Ecosystem Modeling group at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and have joint projects with other groups working on marine mammals,  essential fish habitat and innovative technologies. 

James Overland, NOAA

The Arctic group at PMEL collects field observations and analyses the output from global climate models to better understand Arctic air-ice-sea interactions and their impacts on the climate system and regional ecosystems. We are looking to extend our capabilities to include ice modeling, with special interest in simulating the Chukchi and western Beaufort Seas.

Sandra Parker-Stetter, Northwest Fisheries Science Center

I am a Research Fishery Biologist on the Fisheries Engineering and Acoustic Technologies (FEAT) Team in the Fishery Resource Analysis and Monitoring (FRAM) Division at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center. My interests span active acoustics, biology, and ecology – and all points in between. The FEAT team is responsible for the acoustic-trawl survey that supports the Pacific hake (whiting) stock assessment, and for research to understand the abiotic and biotic drivers of hake distribution, abundance, and biology along the West Coast. As a group, we are engaged in developing/refining advanced technologies (e.g. broadband acoustics and Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV)), applying new and existing technologies to biological/ecological questions, and putting our observations (acoustic, biological, and oceanographic) into context within the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME). We are also active in projects on coupled biological-oceanographic habitat and forecasting models, fisheries management, genetics, eDNA, Pacific hake migration, euphausiids, and winter ecology of the CCLME.

Julia Parrish, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Our lab focuses on how citizen science at scale can provide the data for both baseline and anomalous events within the coastal systems of the California Current and Alaska Current large marine ecosystems. We focus on marine birds as indicators of system health, and have a secondary focus on marine debris. See COASST for more information. Our program attempts to quantitatively describe anomalous events, and ascribe causality, both in service of helping communities, agencies and society make intelligent decisions about how to manage our natural resources.

Andre Punt, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Paul Quay, Oceanography

Tom Quinn, Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Joseph Resing, JISAO

Gabrielle Rocap, Oceanography

I am interested in the ecology and evolution of marine microbes, including phytoplankton, bacteria and viruses.  We use genomic and proteomic approaches to connect organismal physiology with ecosystem function. A project of particular current interest is the community structure and functional roles of bacteria on sinking and suspended particles in the Eastern Tropical North Pacific Oxygen Deficient Zone. This is a collaborative project offering opportunities for field work and close interactions with colleagues applying chemical oceanographic and modeling perspectives to the same question.

Gerard Roe, Earth and Space Sciences

Julian Sachs, Oceanography

I am interested in understanding how the climate has varied on a range of time and space scales. Much of my lab’s recent work has been focused on the tropical Pacific over the last 10,000 years, with an emphasis on the last 2,000 years (the Late Holocene). We use molecular and isotopic measurements in sediment cores that we recover from lakes, swamps and lagoons on islands spanning the entire tropical Pacific Ocean. We work closely with climate theoreticians here at the University of Washington and elsewhere to understand the mechanisms underlying the climate changes we observe. Applicants with expertise in geochemistry, paleoclimatology and/or climate theory are encouraged to contact us to discuss possible postdoctoral research projects.

Casey Saenger, JISAO

Eric Salathe, NW Climate Center

I conduct research on regional climate change and climate change impacts, with a primary focus on the US Pacific Northwest and SE Asia. Specific projects include: regional climate modeling with WRF, extreme precipitation and flood risk, climate change impacts on Puget Sound.

Yolande Serra, JISAO

Serra’s research focuses on improving understanding of the factors that contribute to convective initiation and organization over tropical and sub-tropical ocean and land areas, with a focus on the Western Hemisphere.  These projects have included the study of tropical easterly waves, low-level jets, upper-level troughs and topographically forced diurnal circulations, and their role in initiating and organizing convection over the tropical eastern Pacific, Central America, North American monsoon and Amazon regions.  Such studies contribute to improvements in our understanding of the factors that control rainfall in tropical and semi-arid climate zones, and in the representation of rainfall and its variability in regional and global models used for operational forecasts and climate projections.

Amy Snover, Climate Impacts Group

The Climate Impacts Group supports the development of climate resilience by advancing understanding and awareness of climate risks, and working closely with public and private entities to apply this information as they act to shape society’s future. We develop and deliver the fundamental scientific understanding, data, tools, and guidance necessary for managing the climate risks facing the people, communities, and ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest. Current areas of focus for the group include science in support of resilience to floods (due to sea level rise, changing streamflow and extreme precipitation), clean cool water for fish (projecting changes in wetlands and stream temperature), successful adaptation to a changing climate (frameworks for defining and evaluating success), tribal climate resilience (supporting the development of tribal capacity for vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning), equity in climate adaptation, and the theory and practice of linking scientific knowledge with practical action.

Rolf Sonnerup, JISAO

Phyllis Stabeno, NOAA

EcoFOCI is involved in extensive field and modeling research in the Chukchi and western Beaufort Seas in the Arctic, the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. Our goal is to understand how climate and other physical forcing influence the physical oceanography and the ecosystems in these regions. Research is based on in-depth analysis of oceanographic and atmospheric data in the context of a modern understanding of atmospheric, oceanic and sea-ice dynamical processes. Please see our web page (ecofoci.noaa.gov/) for more information.

Kathleen Stafford, APL

I am an oceanographer with the UW Applied Physics Laboratory and associate professor at the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington. My research focuses on the use of passive acoustic monitoring to study marine mammals and ambient noise in ocean environments. I use passive acoustic monitoring to understand the geographic and seasonal occurrence of large whales based on sound production and integrate acoustic data with environmental variables. This involves developing predictive models of the occurrence of whales based on their environment. Although I have worked all over the world, the majority of my current projects are based in polar regions with a particular focus on the Arctic and how climate change is altering the phenology of marine mammals.

Eric Steig, Earth and Space Sciences

Carol Stepien, PMEL

My research interests center on the population genetics/genomics and patterns of adaptations of marine invertebrates and fishes. This research embraces the fields of genomics, genetics, ecology, oceanography, biogeography, behavior, and evolutionary biology, and bioinformatics. My Genetics and Genomics Group (G3)(established in fall 2016), which I head, at NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Lab has been working on designing and implementing multiple custom targeted high-throughput sequencing metabarcoding assays (nuclear and mitochondrial genes) to discern species compositions, identities, population genetic relationships, and quantity marine animals from plankton and environmental (e) DNA water samples, including from hydrothermal vents, methane seep communities, and northeastern Pacific ecosystems (ranging from Puget Sound, the Salish Sea, the California Current, and Alaskan and Arctic waters). These assays allow us to evaluate all life stages and many taxa simultaneously, at multiple phylogenetic taxonomic levels. We are working in concert with chemical, physical and biological oceanography partners to begin to understand how marine organisms are responding to changing conditions (including acidification, hypoxia, warming, etc.) using techniques that will soon be done remotely and in near real-time. We are working towards the goal for NOAA’s (and government and research partners) implementation across the world’s oceans, as these tools are perfected and analyses become feasible in situ on buoys, wave gliders, Saildrone, drones, etc., with satellite transmission. Our G3 lab currently has a JISAO (Joint Institute) research scientist (Dr. Kim Andrews), a technician, and a postdoc, and I am the primary mentor for 3 PhD students at present. My funding history includes grants from NOAA, NSF, EPA, NOAA, USDA, etc., around 106 scientific publications, and I have sponsored/mentored many highly successful postdoctoral and PhD student researchers. At PMEL I am the Ocean Environment Research Division Leader, as well as run G3 lab research. I additionally hold (unpaid) academic appointments as Affiliate Professor of Biological Oceanography at the University of Washington, Affiliate Professor of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University, and Research Associate at the US Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC), and am a AAAS Fellow. I very much enjoy working with/mentoring postdoctoral researchers, and helping them to grow professionally, travel, publish, write grants, and move on to wonderful rewarding careers. I am an Affiliate Professor in the UW School of Oceanography. Please feel free to contact me at carol.stepien@ noaa.gov

Adam Summers, SAFS

I am a comparative physiologist interested in performance in extreme and/or challenging  environments. I am particularly interested in understanding the physiology, morphology, ecology and life history of hadal fishes and invertebrates. I am looking for colleagues with lander experience, physiology of pressure, and dating tools.

Adrienne Sutton, PMEL

My research centers around the patterns of air-sea CO₂ exchange and ocean acidification in open ocean, coastal, and coral reef environments. Specifically, I am interested in using interdisciplinary approaches to explore how physical and biological mechanisms, such as the El Nino/Southern Oscillation and coral reef metabolism, drive variations in ocean carbon chemistry across time and space. These approaches include using autonomous instrumentation on buoys and other platforms to better understand natural variability and long-term trends in ocean carbon.

Abigail Swann, Atmospheric Sciences

With my research program I am developing a systematic understanding of where and how ecosystems modify the climate system. To do so, I use mathematical models and observations to explore ecosystem-climate interaction dynamics and address fundamental questions about the role of biology in the Earth system. My overall research goal is to quantify how interactions between the land and the atmosphere alter both climate and ecological systems. An underlying hypothesis guiding my work is that the biosphere modifies how the Earth system responds to change, and that the two systems’ interaction reveals emergent behavior not anticipated in either alone. I pose critical questions about ecology’s role in the Earth system’s functioning, a significant unknown factor in the Earth system’s response to change. My work takes the novel approach of investigating not only the impact of climate on biological systems, but also the impact of biology on climate.  I use numerical modeling of photosynthesis, ecosystem dynamics, carbon cycling, atmospheric dynamics and the interactions among them to outline and quantify the two-way interactions between ecosystems and climate. This includes the use of global general circulation models of the atmosphere, terrestrial ecosystem models, ecodemographic models representing size and age structure in addition to leaf level photosynthetic behavior, and simple box models of the carbon cycle. In addition to numerical models I utilize data from the site-level, the stand-level, regional networks and satellites.

LuAnne Thompson, Oceanography

The largest exchanges of heat between the ocean and the atmosphere occur in mid-latitude western boundary current extensions.  These heat exchanges are driven by ocean heat transport convergence, both in the mean and on interannual time-scales.  Investigation of the interaction of the ocean and atmosphere in regions of strong ocean currents has been hampered by biases in low-resolution ocean climate models and a lack of long-term ocean observations.  Records of satellite sea level, sea surface temperature, cloud cover, and surface fluxes of heat are now available for 20 years or more, affording new opportunities to investigate the interaction of the atmosphere and ocean on interannual time scales. By combining satellite and in situ observations with climate model output available from the Climate Model Intercomparison Project version 5 as well as new high-resolution couple ocean-atmosphere model simulations, we are investigating the role of the oceans in storing and transporting heat and fresh water, including where and when stored heat in the ocean is released back to the atmosphere.

Joel Thornton, Atmospheric Sciences

My research focuses on the chemistry of aerosols and clouds, its impact on air quality and climate, and how this chemistry is impacted by couplings between anthropogenic and natural emissions. We use a combination of in situ observations, laboratory process studies, and modeling to study how aerosol particles form and grow from transformations of biogenic hydrocarbons, how sea spray aerosols affect air quality in coastal regions and the cleansing ability of the marine boundary layer as a source for reactive halogens, and how oceanic shipping emissions affect maritime cloud microphysics and vertical development.

Muyin Wang, JISAO

My research interests are in the climate and climate change in the Arctic; possible connections of Arctic climate change with middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere; prediction of Arctic sea ice; climate variability in the North Pacific, and impact of climate change on the ecosystems. Climate model assessment (CMIP3 and CMIP5) is part of the work we have been doing in search for a better way to use these state-of-the-art models.

Yong Wei, JISAO

Dr. Wei’s main expertise is hydrodynamics modeling and hazard assessment of long-wave including tsunamis and storm surge and waves, methods and theory of tsunami model forecast, tsunami/seismic source inversion, deterministic and probabilistic assessment of coastal flooding, geophysical data analysis, water wave mechanics, and tsunami loads and effects on structures. Dr. Wei has extensive experience in development of high-resolution tsunami inundation forecast models. He is also actively working on hydrodynamics modeling to differentiate paleo-deposits of tsunamis and storms. Over the past years, Dr. Wei has led the effort to develop probabilistic tsunami design zone maps for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) standards. He is now a PI of several projects to investigate deterministic and probabilistic tsunami inundation for coastal infrastructures.

Rebecca Woodgate, APL/Oceanography

My research focuses on the physics of the Ocean-ice-atmosphere system of the Arctic, with an emphasis on the collection and analysis of in situ oceanographic data, especially from moorings. I am interested particularly in the flows of Pacific and Atlantic waters within the Arctic; the exchanges from the shelves to the basins; the Pacific inflow to the Arctic via the Bering Strait; and the causes and impacts of Arctic sea-ice reduction, including the interdisciplinary consequences of enhanced oceanic mixing in the Arctic. My PhD was in ocean modeling, but now I focus on observational work, working mostly from ships, with a specialization of mooring work in ice-covered regions. I collaborate with modelers, biologists and chemists to give an interdisciplinary aspect to my work. In the past, I have also worked in Antarctic oceanography and am keen to pursue how the lessons we learn in the Arctic may be applied to the Antarctic polar region.

Dongxiao Zhang, JISAO

Large scale ocean circulation and its role in climate and climate variability. Impacts of changing circulation on marine ecosystem and chemistry. Tropical oceanography and air-sea interaction. High latitude processes that link to Thermohaline Circulation.