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Author: Frankie

New Arctic Sea-Ice Reconstruction Published in Science

New Arctic Sea-Ice Reconstruction Published in Science

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Sea-ice in the Arctic has declined about 40% over the past 40 years, as monitored by satellite-based techniques. Open questions still exist about how fast the Arctic will reach ice-free conditions, seasonally and annually, in the not-so-distant future as humans continue to warm our planet. This necessitates a deeper understanding of the processes that dictate changes in Arctic sea-ice coverage, and how this ice coverage responds to a shifting climate. Along with collaborators at UMass Boston (Jesse Farmer), the USGS…

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Starting at UW, January 2024

Starting at UW, January 2024

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After four somewhat surreal, mostly fantastic years in Los Angeles as a postdoc at Caltech, I’m moving back to my hometown of Seattle to start as an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Oceanography in January 2024. As a kid, I was a huge UW sports fan. I remember one of my elementary school student teachers was a Pac-10 champion gymnast, and I went to watch the UW gymnastics team. I remembering listening to the UW softball…

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Eddy Mixing of Tracers into the Southern Ocean

Eddy Mixing of Tracers into the Southern Ocean

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The Southern Ocean comprises the waters surrounding Antarctica. Here, there are no continents blocking the flow of waters, allowing for westerly winds to drive a current flowing all the way around Antarctica – aptly named the Antarctic Circumpolar current. This part of the ocean is special. It is one of the only places in the world where the deepest ocean waters, rich in carbon and nutrients, which have been kept away from the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years,…

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Dust, Iron, and Nitrogen Fixers in the South Pacific

Dust, Iron, and Nitrogen Fixers in the South Pacific

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The South Pacific Gyre is an oceanographic desert. Inward-spiraling currents push surface waters downward, prevent nutrient-rich waters from reaching the sunlit oceans, and inhibit plankton growth. It’s also about as far from the continents as you can get. So, atmospheric dust inputs are extremely low – and as a result, so are the inputs of micronutrients like iron, which are critical for the few biota that are around to conduct biochemical processes like nitrogen fixation. In 2015-2016, I sailed on…

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Heading west!

Heading west!

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On October 7th I defended my Ph.D. at Lamont-Doherty. If you want to devote an hour to learning about the marine chemistry of thorium and protactinium from me, you can watch a video recording of my defense talk, courtesy of Phil Fitzpatrick and the excellent LDEO IT team. If you want to devote more than an hour to learning about the marine chemistry of thorium and protactinium from me, you can read my thesis, “Biogeochemical Studies of the South Pacific…

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