Bio:

M.S., Ph.D, Institute fur Meereskunde, Kiel, Germany

The ocean general circulation, its space-time variability, associated transport properties of the ocean and their climate relevance. Those problems are investigated by using observations and numerical models, either separately or combined through state estimation procedures (data assimilation). Present work is focussed on satellite oceanography, ocean modeling and ocean state estimation. For this purpose the MIT ocean circulation model and its adjoint is used in a global configuration and constrained by 5+ years of TOPEX/POSEISON absolute and time-varying sea surface height observations, ERS-1/2 altimeter anomalies, Levitus climatology, and NCEP surface momentum, heat and freshwater fluxes as well Reynolds sea surface temperature. In the future increased emphasis will be placed on other data sets especially the WOCE hydrography and float measurements. Observational studies are based primarily on satellite altimetry and surface temperature, but take also into account traditional data. Increased attention is put on the relation of surface temperature and  surface salinity fields to surface fluxes of heat, freshwater and momentum as well as to interior ocean dynamics.