Roemmich, Dean 2018 Alexander Agassiz Medal
Dean Roemmich, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, received the 2018 Alexander Agassiz Medal.
Roemmich helped conceive, then led and developed international scientific support for the Argo Program, an array of nearly 4,000 floating sensors collecting information on the circulation, salinity, density and climate variability of the world’s oceans from the sea surface to a depth of 2,000 meters. More than 30 nations and hundreds of researchers currently participate and cooperate with the program, which has been called one of the scientific triumphs of oceanography. The data collected by these probes and made freely available have transformed our understanding of the ocean’s roles in climate variability and change over a broad range of space- and time-scales. Argo has enabled comprehensive studies of the mean ocean circulation, the oceanic seasonal cycle, interannual ocean/atmosphere phenomena such as El Niňo, and long-term trends including heat gain by the global ocean. All of these topics are foci of Roemmich’s research contributions.
Prior to Argo, Roemmich was already a pioneering oceanographer whose studies covered the large-scale circulation of the oceans by combining hydrology and satellite altimetry. These studies, which examined the heat budget of the ocean and required the development of new types of probes and new observing networks, set the stage for the work currently being done by the Argo Program.
Among Roemmich’s other accomplishments, he also served as a Lead Author for the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The Alexander Agassiz Medal is presented every five years and honors original contributions in the science of oceanography. The award is presented with a medal and a $20,000 prize.
