John Wettlaufer

About

John Wettlaufer is the A.M. Bateman Professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences at Yale University. He is trained in statistical physics and studies stochastic processes, asymptotic analysis, and other approaches and methods from modern applied mathematics and physics. His research includes numerical simulations to probe a broad range of problems such as the microscopic theory of melting, the mechanisms underlying cosmogony, climate dynamics, information theory, and turbulence.

Research topics

• Physics
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• Climatology
• Atmospheric sciences
• Geography
• Mathematics
• Geology
• Mechanics

Selected publications

• Wavier jet streams driven by zonally asymmetric surface thermal forcing

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2022 · 42 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  -plane effect and dry static stability, the flow field exhibits a dramatic transition from a response confined near the surface to one reaching the upper atmosphere. As global warming enhances polar amplification, the midlatitude jet stream intensity is suppressed. The confluence of these effects leads to wavier jet streams.

  DOI

• Stochastic paleoclimatology: Modeling the EPICA ice core climate records

  Chaos An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science · 2023-09-01 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We analyze and model the stochastic behavior of paleoclimate time series and assess the implications for the coupling of climate variables during the Pleistocene glacial cycles. We examine 800 kiloyears of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and temperature proxy data from the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA) Dome-C ice core, which are characterized by 100 ky glacial cycles overlain by fluctuations across a wide range of timescales. We quantify this behavior through mult…

  PublisherDOI

• Thermodynamic cost of erasing information in finite time

  Physical Review Research · 2023-05-09 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The Landauer principle sets a fundamental thermodynamic constraint on the minimum amount of heat that must be dissipated to erase one logical bit of information through a quasistatically slow protocol. For finite time information erasure, the thermodynamic costs depend on the specific physical realization of the logical memory and how the information is erased. Here we treat the problem within the paradigm of a Brownian particle in a symmetric double-well potential. The two minima represent the…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Soft matter physics of the ground beneath our feet

  Soft Matter · 2024-01-01 · 8 citations

  reviewOpen access

  The soft part of the Earth's surface - the ground beneath our feet - constitutes the basis for life and natural resources, yet a general physical understanding of the ground is still lacking. In this critical time of climate change, cross-pollination of scientific approaches is urgently needed to better understand the behavior of our planet's surface. The major topics in current research in this area cross different disciplines, spanning geosciences, and various aspects of engineering, material…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Seasonal Evolution of the Arctic Sea Ice Thickness Distribution

  Journal of Geophysical Research Oceans · 2023-05-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract The Thorndike et al. (1975, https://doi.org/10.1029/jc080i033p04501 ) theory of the ice thickness distribution, g ( h ), treats the dynamic and thermodynamic aggregate properties of the ice pack in a novel and physically self‐consistent manner. Therefore, it has provided the conceptual basis of the treatment of sea‐ice thickness categories in climate models. The approach, however, is not mathematically closed due to the treatment of mechanical deformation using the redistribution functi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• EAGER: Scalable PetaScale Computing for Dielectric Response in Biophysical, Optomechanical, and Geophysical Systems

  NSF · $258k · 2010–2012

• Interfacial Premelting and Geophysical Implications

  NSF · $710k · 2005–2010

Frequent coauthors

• Woosok Moon

  189 shared

• L. T. Giorgini

  97 shared

• Sahil Agarwal

  Christ University

  87 shared

• Srikanth Toppaladoddi

  75 shared

• Robert W. Style

  69 shared

• Eric R. Dufresne

  49 shared

• Andrew Wells

  University of Oxford

  48 shared

• Andong He

  Yale University

  41 shared

Similar researchers at Yale University

• Shun-ichiro Karatoh-81
• Derek Briggsh-72
• David Evansh-66