Professor
Ph.D. Columbia University
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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.
Sarmiento, J. L., T. M. C. Hughes, R. J. Stouffer, S. Manabe, 1998. Simulated response of the ocean carbon cycle to anthropogenic climate warming. Nature, 393: 245-249.
Suntharalingam, P., and J. L. Sarmiento, 2000. Factors governing the oceanic nitrous oxide distribution: Simulations with an ocean general circulation model. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 14: 429-454.
Matsumoto, K., J. L. Sarmiento, and M. A. Brzezinski, 2002. Silicic acid leakage from the Southern Ocean as a possible mechanism for explaining glacial atmospheric pCO2. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 16 (10): 10.1029/2001GB001442.
Sarmiento, J. L., J. Dunne, A. Gnanadesikan, R. M. Key, K. Matsumoto, and R. Slater, 2002. A new estimate of the CaCO3 to organic carbon export ratio. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 16 (4), 1107, doi:10.1029/2002GB001919.
Sarmiento, J. L. and N. Gruber, 2002. Sinks for anthropogenic carbon. Physics Today, August 2002, pp. 30-36.
Gnanadesikan, A., J. L. Sarmiento, and R. D. Slater,2003. Effects of patchy ocean fertilization on atmospheric carbon dioxide and biological production. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 17 (2), doi: 10.1029/2002GB001940.