Staff Profile

Carol Anne Clayson

Preferred Name: Carol Anne Clayson

SENIOR SCIENTIST

PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY

Email: cclayson@whoi.edu

Phone: 508 289 3626

Website: http://cclayson.whoi.edu/

Lab/Group Site: http://mmm.whoi.edu/

Education

• Ph.D., Aerospace Engineering Sciences, Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, The University of Colorado, 1995
• M.S., Aerospace Engineering Sciences, The University of Colorado, 1990
• B.S., Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University, 1988

Research Interests

My research specifically covers the areas of high-resolution air-sea interaction, satellite remote sensing, and ocean modeling. There is a need for high resolution, accurate surface turbulent fluxes (heat, water vapor, momentum) over the global ocean. Specific applications of such a dataset, together with a comparable surface radiation flux and precipitation datasets, would include:

• Constraining the budget and mean transports of heat and fresh water in the global ocean
• Diagnosing regional and time variations of the coupled atmosphere-ocean system
• Evaluating the surface fluxes in coupled atmosphere-ocean models and weather forecasting models
• Providing surface forcing for ocean models

Major efforts are presently underway to produce comparable datasets for the surface radiation, and now there is a parallel effort to evaluate the different techniques for determining the surface turbulent fluxes. The research data examines integral constraints including: global heat/water balance, meridional heat and freshwater transports, and heat/water balance in enclosed seas.  My research has received funding from NASA, NOAA, the Office of Naval Research, and NSF.