Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

Professor, Ph.D. Columbia University

Address: 306A Sayre Hall
               M44 Guyot Hall

Phone: (609) 258-6585

Email: jls at princeton.edu

Publications     Vita     Ocean Biogeochemical Dynamics

Dr. Jorge L. Sarmiento is the George J. Magee Professor of  Geoscience and Geological Engineering, 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.

Beaulieu, C., J. Chen, J. L. Sarmiento, 2012.   Change-point analysis as a tool to detect abrupt climate variations. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, 370 1228-1249; doi:10.1098/rsta.2011.0383.

Beaulieu, C., J. L. Sarmiento, J.L., S. E. Mikaloff Fletcher, J. Chen, D. Medvigy, 2012.   Identification and characterization of abrupt changes in the land uptake of carbon. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 26: GB1007, doi:10.1029/2010GB004024.

Downes, S. M., A. Gnanadesikan, S. M. Griffies, and J. L. Sarmiento, 2011.   Water Mass Exchange in the Southern Ocean in Coupled Climate Models. J. Phys. Oceanogr., 41: 1756-1771, doi: 10.1175/2011JPO4586.1.

Rodgers, K. B., S. E. Mikaloff-Fletcher, D. Bianchi, C. Beaulieu, E. D. Galbraith, A. Gnanadesikan, A. G. Hogg, D. Iudicone, B. R. Lintner, T. Naegler, P. J. Reimer, J. L. Sarmiento, and R. D. Slater, 2011.   Interhemispheric gradient of atmospheric radiocarbon reveals natural variability of Southern Ocean winds. Clim. Past, 7 (4): 1123-1138.

Palter, J. B., M. S. Lozier, J. L. Sarmiento, and R. G. Williams, 2011. The supply of excess phosphate across the Gulf Stream and the maintenance of subtropical nitrogen fixation, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 25, GB4007, doi:10.1029/2010GB003955.

Kwon, E. Y., J. L. Sarmiento, J. R. Toggweiler, and T. DeVries, 2011. The control of atmospheric pCO₂ by ocean ventilation change: The effect of the oceanic storage of biogenic carbon, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 25, GB3026, doi:10.1029/2011GB004059.

Galbraith, E., E. Y. Kwon, A. Gnandesikan, K. B. Rodgers, S. M. Griffies, D. Bianchi, J. Dunne, J. L. Sarmiento, J. Simeon, R. D. Slater, A. Wittenberg, and I. Held, 2011. Climate variability and radiocarbon in the CM2Mc earth system model.   J. Climate, 24: 4230-4254, doi: 10.1175/2011JCLI3919.1

Downes, S. M., A. S. Budnick, J. L. Sarmiento, and R. Farneti, 2011.   Impacts of wind stress on the Antarctic Circumpolar Current fronts and associated subduction, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L11605, doi:10.1029/2011GL047668.

Cheung, W. W. L., J. Dunne, J. L. Sarmiento, and D. Pauly, electronic publication, 2011.  Integrating ecophysiology and plankton dynamics into projected maximum fisheries catch potential under climate change in the Northeast Atlantic.  ICES Journal of Marine Science, doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsr012.

Sarmiento, J. L., A. Gnanadesikan, I. Marinov, and R. Slater, 2011. The role of marine biota in the CO2 balance of the ocean-atmosphere system. In: C.M. Duarte (Ed.). The Role of Marine Biota in the Functioning of the Biosphere. Fundación BBVA, Madrid.

Stock, C. A., M. A. Alexander, N. A. Bond, K. Brander, W. W. L. Cheung, E. N. Curchitser, T. L. Delworth, J. P. Dunne, S. M. Griffies, M. A. Haltuch, J. A. Hare, A. B.. Hollowed, P. Lehodey, S. A. Levin, J. S. Link, K. A. Rose, R. R. Rykaczewski, J. L. Sarmiento. R. J. Stouffer, F. B. Schwing, G. A. Vecchi, F. E. Werner, 2010.   On the use of IPCC class models to assess the impact of climate on living marine resources. Progr. Oceanogr., doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2010.09.001.

Sarmiento, J. L., R. D. Slater, J. Dunne, A. Gnanadesikan, and M. R. Hiscock, 2010, Efficiency of small scale carbon mitigation by patch iron fertilization: Biogeosciences, 7: 3593-3624, doi:10.5194/bg-7-3593-2010.

Palter, J. B., J. L. Sarmiento, A. Gnanadesikan, J. Simeon, and R. D. Slater, 2010.   Fueling primary production: nutrient return pathways from the deep ocean and their dependence on the Meridional Overturning Circulation.   Biogeosciences 7: 3549-3568.

Crevoisier, C., C. Sweeney, M. Gloor, J. L. Sarmiento, and P. P. Tans, 2010.   Regional US carbon sinks from three-dimensional atmospheric CO₂ sampling.   Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 107: 18348-18353, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0900062107.

Bianchi, D., J. L. Sarmiento, A. Gnanadesikan, R. M. Key, P. Schlosser, and R. Newton, 2010, Low helium flux from the mantle inferred from simulations of oceanic helium isotope data.   Earth Planet. Sci. Lett., 297: 379-386, doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2010.06.037.

Gloor, M., J. L. Sarmiento, and N. Gruber, 2010. What can be learned about carbon cycle climate feedbacks from the CO₂ airborne fraction?, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10(16), 7739-7751, doi:10.5194/acp-10-7739-2010.

Sarmiento, J. L., M. Gloor, N. Gruber, C. Beaulieu, A. R. Jacobson, S. E. Mikaloff Fletcher, S. Pacala, and K. Rodgers, 2010. Trends and regional distributions of land and ocean carbon sinks: Biogeosciences 7: 2351-2367.

Cheung, W W., and Jorge L Sarmiento, et al., 2010. Large-scale redistribution of maximum fisheries catch potential in the global ocean under climate change. Global Change Biology, 16(1), doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.01995.x.

Henson, S A., Jorge L Sarmiento, John P Dunne, L Bopp, I Lima, S C Doney, Jasmin John, and C Beaulieu, 2010. Detection of anthropogenic climate change in satellite records of ocean chlorophyll and productivity. Biogeosciences, 7(2), 621-640.