2011-12 Tour Information
Eastern North America:
November 7-11, 2011 and March 12-16, 2012
Western North America:
January 3-13, 2012
GO TO: Abstract 1 | Abstract 2
Joellen L. Russell
Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Joellen Russell received her bachelor's degree at Harvard University in Environmental Geoscience before earning her Ph.D at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD in Oceanography. Her fieldwork in the Southern Ocean studying the biogeochemistry of Mode and Intermediate Water led to a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Washington's Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean. Prof. Russell then became a Research Scientist at Princeton University working at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory during the intensive preparations for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment. Prof. Russell's work there on the westerly winds led to her greatest research accomplishment so far: the creation of a new paradigm in climate science, namely that warmer climates produce stronger westerly winds. This insight solved one of the long-standing climate paradoxes, the mechanism responsible for transferring one-third of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into the ocean and then back out again during our repeated glacial-interglacial cycles. She continues active collaboration with the GFDL Earth System Model and Climate Model Development Teams on the latest ultra high-resolution model. Prof. Russell is currently serving as a member of the U.S. CLIVAR Office, Process Studies and Model Improvements Panel.
Prof. Russell joined the faculty in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona in 2006 and has expanded her research on the role of the westerly winds in global climate to patterns of drought in the continental US during the last 1000 years, the present and the future, and the circulation of the methane atmosphere on Saturn's moon Titan with members of the Cassini Mission. Prof. Russell's current research is focused on the joint venture between ExxonMobil and the UA Department of Geosciences, Convergent Orogenic Systems Analysis (COSA), exploring the interactions between climate and orography. Prof. Russell won the UA Provost's Teaching Award in 2010 while successfully teaching introductory oceanography to over 1000 undergraduates in a single class, the most popular science class on campus. She lives in Tucson with her husband and their two children.