Joellen Russell
· University Distinguished Professor, Biogeochemical Dynamics, Thomas R. Brown Distinguished Chair of Integrative ScienceUniversity of Arizona · Geosciences
Active 1976–2025
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About
Prof. Joellen L. Russell is an oceanographer, climate scientist, and University Distinguished Professor at the University of Arizona. Her research explores the role of the ocean in the global climate, with a focus on the Southern Ocean and the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds. She employs robot floats, supercomputers, and satellites to study the Southern Ocean and its influence on the transient global climate. Russell uses earth system models to simulate the climate and carbon cycle across past, present, and future scenarios, developing observationally-based metrics to evaluate these simulations. Her work on westerly winds led to a significant breakthrough in climate science, establishing that warmer climates produce stronger westerly winds, which helped resolve a long-standing climate paradox related to carbon transfer during glacial-interglacial cycles. Additionally, she and colleagues introduced the 'Zealandia Switch,' a mechanism explaining how changes in the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds can trigger rapid, global glacial retreat, accounting for synchronous ice sheet changes during the last ice age. Russell is the lead for the modeling theme of the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project (SOCCOM) and collaborates with NOAA’s GFDL. She is actively involved in international scientific organizations, serving as the US Executive Committee member of IAPSO. Russell holds an A.B. in Environmental Geoscience from Harvard and a Ph.D. in…
Research topics
- Climatology
- Environmental science
- Geology
- Computer Science
- Oceanography
- Geography
- Ecology
- Physical geography
- Operating system
- Engineering
Selected publications
Journal of Climate · 2020 · 163 citations
Abstract The air–sea exchange of heat and carbon in the Southern Ocean (SO) plays an important role in mediating the climate state. The dominant role the SO plays in storing anthropogenic heat and carbon is a direct consequence of the unique and complex ocean circulation that exists there. Previous generations of climate models have struggled to accurately represent key SO properties and processes that influence the large-scale ocean circulation. This has resulted in low confidence ascribed to t…
Geoscientific model development · 2020 · 146 citations
Abstract. The Earth System Model Evaluation Tool (ESMValTool) is a community diagnostics and performance metrics tool designed to improve comprehensive and routine evaluation of Earth system models (ESMs) participating in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). It has undergone rapid development since the first release in 2016 and is now a well-tested tool that provides end-to-end provenance tracking to ensure reproducibility. It consists of (1) an easy-to-install, well-documented Pyth…
The Zealandia Switch: Ice age climate shifts viewed from Southern Hemisphere moraines
Quaternary Science Reviews · 2021 · 113 citations
Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans · 2022-04-28 · 61 citations
articleOpen accessAbstract We use two coupled climate models, GFDL‐CM4 and GFDL‐ESM4, to investigate the physical response of the Southern Ocean to changes in surface wind stress, Antarctic meltwater, and the combined forcing of the two in a pre‐industrial control simulation. The meltwater cools the ocean surface in all regions except the Weddell Sea, where the wind stress warms the near‐surface layer. The limited sensitivity of the Weddell Sea surface layer to the meltwater is due to the spatial distribution of…
The Southern Ocean carbon and climate observations and modeling (SOCCOM) project: A review
Progress In Oceanography · 2023 · 56 citations
The Southern Ocean serves as the primary gateway through which the intermediate, deep, and bottom waters of the ocean interact with the surface ocean (and thus the atmosphere), and it has a profound influence on the oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon and heat as well as nutrient resupply from the abyss to the surface. Yet it has been the least observed and understood region of the world ocean. The Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) project was implemented in…
Recent grants
Frequent coauthors
- 34 shared
P. J. Goodman
University of Arizona
- 34 shared
Ronald J. Stouffer
University of Arizona
- 26 shared
Matthew R. Mazloff
University of California, San Diego
- 26 shared
Lynne D. Talley
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
- 21 shared
David A. Feary
- 19 shared
Kenneth S. Johnson
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
- 18 shared
Nancy L. Williams
- 16 shared
Hideaki Machiyama
Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Labs
Awards & honors
- University Distinguished Professor, Biogeochemical Dynamics
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