Ronald Pacanowski
I am a research oceanographer at GFDL where I've been involved in various aspects of ocean model development and analysis since 1971. During the 1980's and early 1990's my research focused on using models to understand processes in the tropical oceans such as ocean adjustment, heat and mass balances, vertical mixing, equatorial undercurrent, air-sea interaction, and El Niño. From 1989 to 2001, I was responsible for the development of the Modular Ocean Model (MOM) project. After development of the MOM 4 core and its addition to GFDL's FMS (Flexible Modeling System) in 2001, my interest shifted away from model development and back to using models in collaboration with George Philander's group at Princeton University where we focused on the role of the ocean's thermocline in affecting climate on decadal, century, and paleo timescales. Those research interests led to an investigation of the earth's climate during 3 million years ago when data suggests a permanent El Niño existed. Although we were able to simulate such a condition in an Ocean model, all attempts to simulate a permanent El Niño in a coupled model failed. We were left to conclude that either the data reconstructions were wrong or there is something wrong with state of the art climate models. Current research involves development of a high resolution ocean model to gain a better understanding of the earth's present climate and possible future global warming scenarios.
High Resolution ocean and climate modeling.
The panel on the left is the average temperature in the upper 200m averaged over year 10 from the control case of a global ocean-ice model forced by climatology. The Gulf Stream separates north of Cape Hatteras and flows eastward across the Atlantic leaving waters east of the Grand Banks too cold. The panel on the right is from the same model with a more realistic Gulf Stream separation and northerly flow east of the Grand Banks.
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