The Physics of Oceans and Atmospheres (POA) research discipline contains two core subdisciplines: Physical oceanography and atmospheric sciences.
Teaching and Research Faculty
Andrea Allan, Jack Barth, Jesse Cusack, Simon de Szoeke, Edward Dever, Melanie Fewings, Jonathan Fram, Amrapalli Garanaik, Jessica Garwood, Jennifer Hutchings, Andrea Jenney, Mike Kosro, Jim Lerczak, Ricardo Matano, Phil Mote, Jonathan Nash, Larry O'Neill, Tuba Özkan-Haller, Brodie Pearson, David Rupp, Roger Samelson, Andreas Schmittner, Kipp Shearman, Karen Shell, Emily Shroyer, Nick Siler, Eric Skyllingstad, Yvette Spitz, Justin Wettstein, Greg Wilson, Ed Zaron, Seth Zippel
POA Email Lists
Go to CEOAS Email Lists (on SharePoint; login required) and search for "poa" using Ctrl-F (Windows, Linux, Chrome OS), ⌘-F (Mac), or tap (upload) then Find on Page (phone or tablet).
Physics of Oceans and Atmospheres Seminar Series
Tuesdays from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Burt 193 and on Zoom
Spring Term 2026
Information will be updated as it becomes available.
If you would like to present, are hosting a visitor, know someone who might be interested, or have speaker suggestions, please contact Jihun Jung who is organizing this term's POA seminars. Also welcome are suggestions for non-OSU visiting speakers. POA discipline seminar funds are available to provide partial travel support for external visitors if needed.
- April 14 – Christo Buizert (OSU CEOAS), The ocean heat valve: AMOC and planetary energy budget during abrupt glacial climate change
- April 21 – Nick Siler (OSU CEOAS), The mountains are getting shorter: orographic precipitation change in the western US
- May 5 – James Girton (University of Washington), The promise, potential, and pitfalls of globally-distributed subsurface internal wave and mixing measurements
- May 12 – J. Xavier Prochaska (UC Santa Cruz), On measuring the energy transfer at horizontal scales of ~10-100km with underwater gliders
- May 19 – Kyle Nardi (NCAR), Leveraging a Variable-Resolution Earth System Model to Depict an Impactful Rain-on-Snow Flooding Event in Glacier National Park
- May 26 – Inés Leyba (CEOAS)
Title: Boundary-Layer Wind Variability along the California Coast
- June 9 – Bethan Wynne-Cattanach
Title: Turbulent processes at the ocean’s solid boundaries: sloping sea floors and ice shelves
Abstract: Despite being very localised, turbulence and mixing within both the bottom- and ice-ocean boundary layers play important roles in the ocean’s global circulation and sea level. Recent theories suggest that deep-ocean upwelling, vital for maintaining the abyssal overturning circulation, is confined to a bottom boundary layer on the ocean's sloping seafloor while ocean-driven melting at the base of ice shelves is a primary driver in the acceleration of the flow of grounded ice into the ocean, leading to sea level rise. This talk will present observations and numerical modelling of these small-scale processes which provide insight into the complex dynamics at the ocean’s solid boundaries and their role in the larger climate system.
First, I will present findings from a field campaign conducted in a typical continental slope canyon, which focused on directly observing the turbulent processes within the near-boundary region. Using a passive dye release, we observed rapid diapycnal upwelling at a rate approximately 10,000 times higher than the global average needed to sustain the circulation. We also found that three-dimensional processes are crucial and lead to adiabatic exchange between the boundary region and the interior at tidal and longer timescales. This exchange re-stratifies the boundary, making mixing efficient and allowing for diapycnal upwelling. We find persistent ejection along parts of the canyon, suggesting that horizontal variability in turbulence can drive long-term exchange between the boundary layer and the interior, linking localized mixing processes near topography to the larger-scale circulation.
I will then introduce my current work on the ice-ocean boundary layer beneath ice shelves. Observations have shown that basal topography beneath rapidly melting ice shelves in warm cavities is complicated, including topographic features such as terraces which are large enough to disrupt the ice-ocean boundary layer and control melt rate. However, these features are too small to be resolved in large-scale climate models, and our current understanding from observations is limited. Using three-dimensional, turbulence permitting large-eddy simulations of the ice-ocean boundary layer I examine the influence of basal terraces, representative of those observed at Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf, on ocean turbulence and ice melt.