James McWilliams

About

James McWilliams is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA, holding the Louis B. Slichter Professorship of Earth Sciences since 1994. He received his B.S. in Applied Mathematics with honors from Caltech in 1968, followed by a M.S. in 1969 and a Ph.D. in 1971 from Harvard. His early career included a Research Fellowship in Geophysical Fluid Dynamics at Harvard and a position as a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), where he worked in the Oceanography Section. In 2002, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. McWilliams' primary scientific research focuses on the fluid dynamics of Earth's oceans and atmosphere, encompassing their theory and computational modeling. His work includes studying the maintenance of general circulations, climate dynamics, vortex dynamics, planetary boundary layers, thermohaline convection, and the roles of coherent structures in turbulent flows within geophysical and astrophysical regimes. Recently, he has contributed to developing a three-dimensional simulation model of the U.S. West Coast that integrates physical oceanography, biogeochemistry, and sediment transport to interpret coastal phenomena, analyze historical variability, and assess future scenarios.

Research topics

• Geology
• Oceanography
• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Biology
• Meteorology
• Physics
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Environmental resource management

Selected publications

• EUREC ⁴ A

  Earth system science data · 2021 · 268 citations

  Abstract. The science guiding the EUREC4A campaign and its measurements is presented. EUREC4A comprised roughly 5 weeks of measurements in the downstream winter trades of the North Atlantic – eastward and southeastward of Barbados. Through its ability to characterize processes operating across a wide range of scales, EUREC4A marked a turning point in our ability to observationally study factors influencing clouds in the trades, how they will respond to warming, and their link to other components…

  DOI

• Accumulation, transformation and transport of microplastics in estuarine fronts

  Nature Reviews Earth & Environment · 2022 · 184 citations

  DOI

• Coastal eutrophication drives acidification, oxygen loss, and ecosystem change in a major oceanic upwelling system

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2021 · 121 citations

  , 0.09, and 0.47, respectively, rival or exceed the global open-ocean oxygen loss and acidification since the preindustrial period. The biological effects of these changes on local fisheries, proliferation of harmful algal blooms, water clarity, and submerged aquatic vegetation have yet to be fully explored.

  DOI

• Climate-driven aerobic habitat loss in the California Current System

  Science Advances · 2020 · 116 citations

  Climate warming is expected to intensify hypoxia in the California Current System (CCS), threatening its diverse and productive marine ecosystem. We analyzed past regional variability and future changes in the Metabolic Index (Φ), a species-specific measure of the environment's capacity to meet temperature-dependent organismal oxygen demand. Across the traits of diverse animals, Φ exhibits strong seasonal to interdecadal variations throughout the CCS, implying that resident species already exper…

  DOI

• S-MODE: The Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment

  IGARSS 2022 - 2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium · 2020 · 42 citations

  The Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE) is a NASA Earth Ventures Suborbital Investigation designed to test the hypothesis that kilometer-scale (“submesoscale”) ocean eddies make important contributions to vertical exchange of climate and biological variables in the upper ocean. To test this hypothesis, S-MODE will employ a combination of aircraft-based remote sensing measurements of the ocean surface, measurements from ships, measurements from a variety of autonomous oceanographic p…

  DOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: CMG: Mathematical Theory and Modeling of Wave-Current Interaction

  NSF · $324k · 2003–2009

• Collaborative Research: Topography, Boundary Currents and the Submesoscale

  NSF · $352k · 2010–2014

• Dynamical and Material Connectivity Across Continental Shelves

  NSF · $632k · 2014–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Lionel Renault

  Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

  175 shared

• M. Jeroen Molemaker

  University of California, Los Angeles

  102 shared

• Peter P. Sullivan

  NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research

  83 shared

• Jonathan Gula

  Ifremer

  66 shared

• Alexander F. Shchepetkin

  65 shared

• Fayçal Kessouri

  60 shared

• Roy Barkan

  University of California, Los Angeles

  52 shared

• François Colas

  Institut de Recherche pour le Développement

  48 shared

Education

• B.S., Applied Mathematics

  Caltech

  1968

• M.S., Applied Mathematics

  Harvard

  1969

• Ph.D., Applied Mathematics

  Harvard

  1971

Awards & honors

• National Academy of Sciences (2002)
• Louis B. Slichter Professor of Earth Sciences at UCLA (1994)

Similar researchers at University of California, Los Angeles

• Aradhna Tripatih-75
• Alex Hallh-71
• Laurent Pilonh-69