Physical Oceanography Division

09/01/2012 - 10/31/2012

Several AOML and CIMAS scientists participated in the annual U.S. Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) held in Boulder, Colorado on August 15-17, 2012. The U.S. AMOC meeting brought together approximately 90 U.S. and international scientists to discuss advances in understanding the state, variability, and predictability of the AMOC from observational and numerical modeling perspectives.

01/20/2011 - 08/01/2011

Physical Oceanographers Molly Baringer and Gustavo Goni, together with scientists from CSIRO in Australia are organizing the First International XBT Science Workshop (XSW-1) in Melbourne, Australia, July 7-8, 2011.

09/01/2012 - 10/01/2012

The record-breaking U.S. tornado outbreaks in the spring of 2011 prompt the need to identify long-term climate signals that could potentially provide seasonal predictability for U.S. tornado outbreaks. A new research led by scientists in the Physical Oceanography Division of NOAA-AOML used both observations and model experiments to show that a positive phase Trans-Niño may be one such climate signal.

11/01/2011 - 12/01/2011

In this study highlighted in the Editors' Choice of Science Magazine ( issue of Oct. 21, 2011 ), NOAA scientists have identified a relationship between large–scale climate factors, the Atlantic warm pool, and hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. This relationship indicates that a large warm pool is an unfavorable condition for hurricanes to landfall on the United States coast.

09/01/2011 - 10/15/2011

A new study led by researchers from University of Miami, NOAA-AOML, IFM-GEOMAR, and NCAR explores why the Atlantic Ocean has warmed substantially more than any other ocean basin since the 1950s. The research article published in the Geophysical Research letters evidences that the observed large warming of the Atlantic Ocean since the 1950s is largely induced by an increase in the inter-ocean heat transport from the Indian Ocean via the Agulhas leakage. The study points to an important role played by the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) in the South Atlantic in enhancing the secular warming of the Atlantic Ocean.

01/21/2011 - 02/28/2011

03/01/2010 - 04/15/2010

In articles published in the scientific journal of Geophysical Research Letters and the AGU Newspaper of EOS, AOML’s scientists Chunzai Wang and Sang-Ki Lee show that tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic varies out-of-phase with that in the eastern North Pacific on both interannual and multidecadal timescales. That is, when tropical cyclone activity in the North Atlantic increases (decreases), tropical cyclone activity in the eastern North Pacific decreases (increases). Both vertical wind shear and convective instability contribute to the out-of-phase relationship, whereas relative humidity and vorticity variations at the lower troposphere do not seem to cause the relationship.

05/01/2012 - 06/01/2012

AOML's Physical Oceanography Division has two summer interns as part of the NOAA Hollings Scholars Program. They will be helping PhOD scientist in the analysis and organization of long-term oceanographic time series.

04/01/2012 - 05/31/2012

In celebration of Earth Day, three students from the Key Biscayne K-8 Center, Key Biscayne, FL deployed a NOAA drifter on April 27 as part of the Adopt-A-Drifter Program, in partnership with students from the International Preparatory School in Santiago, Chile. The three Florida students were top winners in a competition to describe the significance of the ocean in their lives. As part of this event, Rick Lumpkin was interviewed on the Weather Channel where he described NOAA's Global Drifter Program and the Adopt-A-Drifter outreach effort.

02/01/2012 - 03/31/2012

Researchers at the Physical Oceanography Division at AOML are testing a new observational platform for measuring the upper ocean thermal and salinity structure. This new observational platform named UCT Depth (UCTD) will enable researchers to collect temperature and salinity profiles of the upper ocean at underway speeds, to depths of up to 500 m.

05/15/2010 - 06/15/2010

04/15/2010 - 05/31/2010

A classic conundrum of physical oceanographic and climatic research has been how to measure the deep ocean and record data with instruments on the bottom of the ocean while also getting the data back to land quickly enough to be used in climate analysis and prediction. A deep ocean data retrieval system developed at the Physical Oceanography Division of AOML has been recently tested and once fully operational will allow scientific instruments anchored on the ocean bottom to send their data back via expendable data pods that will release from the ocean floor on a programmable schedule.