Rick Lumpkin

Dr. Rick Lumpkin is the Director of the Physical Oceanography Division of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML). Dr. Lumpkin’s research focuses on upper ocean processes and ocean circulation. He received his Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Hawaii in 1998 and conducted a postdoctorate at the French institute IFREMER in 1998—2000. Lumpkin then worked as an assistant in research at Florida State University, where in collaboration with Kevin Speer he developed an inverse model of the global meridional overturning (“conveyor belt”) circulation from hydrographic data, current meter moorings and air-sea heat and freshwater flux estimates. In 2004, Lumpkin became a federal employee at AOML in Miami, Florida.

In 2015, he was promoted to deputy director of AOML’s Physical Oceanography Division, and become acting director of the division in 2021. Lumpkin serves as lead of the US delegation to the Data Buoy Cooperation Panel (DBCP). In 2020, Lumpkin joined the WMO’s Standing Committee for Measurements, Instrumentation, and Traceability. As a Principal Investigator of NOAA’s Global Drifter Program (GDP), he oversees a global array of ~1300 satellite-tracked drifting buoys measuring ocean temperatures, surface currents, barometric pressure, and waves, and has used these data to write a number of peer-reviewed publications. Lumpkin has served as chief scientist on a number of oceanographic research cruises. He also helped design ocean currents displays in the Sant Ocean Hall of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.