Princeton University

Jorge Sarmiento

Professor, Ph.D. Columbia University

Address: 306A Sayre Hall

Phone: (609) 258-6585

Email: jls at princeton.edu

Publications     Vita     Ocean Biogeochemical Dynamics

Dr. Jorge L. Sarmiento is a Professor of Geosciences at Princeton University .   He obtained his PhD at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University in 1978, and then served as a post-doc at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/NOAA in Princeton before joining the Princeton University faculty in 1980.   He has published widely on the oceanic cycles of climatically important chemicals such as carbon dioxide, on the use of chemical tracers to study ocean circulation, and on the impact of climate change on ocean biogeochemistry.   He has participated in the scientific planning and execution of many of the large-scale multi-institutional and international oceanographic biogeochemical and tracer programs of the last two decades.   He was Director of Princeton's Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program from 1980 to 1990 and 2006 to the present, and is Director of the Cooperative Institute for Climate Science.   He has served on the editorial board of multiple journals and as editor of Global Biogeochemical Cycles.   He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

My research aims to improve our understanding of the fundamental processes controlling the ocean-atmosphere distribution of climatically important chemicals, in particular the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, and how these have changed through time.  The research covers a wide span of processes such as ocean chemistry, biology, and circulation in the past, present and projected future and includes the effects of anthropogenic perturbations. The approaches I use include analysis of a variety of observations, many of which we obtain from oceanographic cruises, as well as the development of sophisticated process models to incorporate in global general circulation models of both the ocean and atmosphere.

For the past decade, the major focus of my research has been on the fate of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and changes in land use. My group and I have developed general circulation models of the ocean constrained with tracers of ocean circulation and oceanic observations of dissolved inorganic carbon to estimate uptake of anthropogenic CO₂. We have used atmospheric general circulation models constrained with atmospheric CO₂ observations to estimate transport of CO₂ in the atmosphere and carbon uptake by the terrestrial biosphere as well as the ocean. We are working in conjunction with ocean biologists to develop ecosystem models for predicting photosynthetic uptake of carbon in the surface ocean, as well as remineralization of organic matter in the deep ocean. We have used coupled atmosphere-ocean models of climate warming to study the impact of anthropogenic climate warming on the ocean carbon cycle, and are presently engaged in a major collaborative effort to develop a new earth system model that will predict climate change and the global carbon cycle simultaneously. We have participated in the scientific planning and execution of most of the large-scale oceanic observational programs of the last two decades and have contributed to national and international planning for studies of the global carbon cycle.

Cheung, W. W. L., B. W. Y. Lam, J. L. Sarmiento, K. Kearney, R. Watson, and D. Pauly, 2009.   Global marine biodiversity impacts under climate change scenarios.   Fish and Fisheries, doi: 10.1111/j.1467-2979.2008.00315.x

Gruber, N., M. Gloor, S. C. Doney, S. E. Mikaloff Fletcher, S. Dutkiewicz, M. J. Follows, M. Gerber, A. R. Jacobson, F. Joos, K. Lindsay, D. Menemenlis, A. Mouchet, A. Müller, J. L. Sarmiento, and T. Takahashi 2009. Oceanic sources, sinks, and transport of atmospheric CO₂. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, fol. 23(1), GB1005, doi:10.1029/2008GB003349.

Henson, S. A., J. P. Dunne, and J. L. Sarmiento, 2009. Decadal variability in North Atlantic phytoplankton blooms. J. Geophys. Res., 114, C04013, doi: 10.1029/2008JC005139.

Mignone, B. K., R. H. Socolow, J. L. Sarmiento, and M. Oppenheimer, 2008.   Atmospheric stabilization and the timing of carbon mitigation.   Climatic Change, 88: 251-265, doi:10.1007/s10584-007-9391-8.

Matsumoto, K. and J. Sarmiento, 2008. A corollary to the silicic acid leakage hypothesis. Paleoceanography, 23, PA2203, doi:10.1029/2007PA001515.

Moore, W. S., J. L. Sarmiento, and R. M. Key, 2008.   Submarine groundwater discharge revealed by ²²⁸Ra distribution in the upper Atlantic Ocean . Nature Geoscience, 1: 309-311.

Rodgers, K. B., J. L. Sarmiento, O. Aumont, C. Crevoisier, C. de B. Montegut, N. Metzl, 2008.   A wintertime uptake window for anthropogenic CO₂ in the North Pacific.   Global Biogeochem. Cycles, GB2020, doi:10.1029/2006GB002920.

Marinov, I. , A. Gnanadesikan, J. L. Sarmiento, J. R. Toggweiler, M. Follows, and B. K. Mignone, 2008.  Impact of oceanic circulation on biological carbon storage in the ocean and atmospheric pCO₂.   Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 22, GB3007, doi:10.1029/2007GB002958.

Marinov, I. , M. Follows, A. Gnanadesikan, J. L. Sarmiento, and R. D. Slater, 2008.   How does ocean biology affect atmospheric pCO₂: theory and models.    J. Geophys. Res., 113, C07032, doi:10.1029/2007JC004598.