Understanding, Modeling, Predicting
Our group aims to advance the fundamental understanding of ocean dynamics and its role in the climate system in order to improve climate change projections. Our team works on a wide range of topics including global and regional sea level rise, ocean decadal predictions, the representation of ocean turbulence in climate models, and uncertainty quantification for seasonal predictions. Recently, we have been particularly interested in the role of the ocean dynamics in shaping patterns of ocean heat and carbon storage and sea level under climate change, and in the development of physics-aware machine learning models to deepen our understanding of climate processes and their representation in climate models.
Our group strives to create a productive, safe, positive and inclusive environment. We value and support the participation of every member of our group and want to ensure everyone has an enjoyable and fulfilling experience, both professionally and personally.
[formal bio] Laure Zanna is a Professor in Mathematics & Atmosphere/Ocean Science at the Courant Institute, New York University. Her research focuses on the dynamics of the climate system and the main emphasis of her work is to study the influence of the ocean on local and global scales. Prior to NYU, she was a faculty member at the University of Oxford until 2019, and obtained her PhD in 2009 in Climate Dynamics from Harvard University. She was the recipient of the 2020 Nicholas P. Fofonoff Award from the American Meteorological Society “For exceptional creativity in the development and application of new concepts in ocean and climate dynamics”. She is the lead principal investigator of the NSF-NOAA Climate Process Team on Ocean Transport and Eddy Energy, and M2LInES – an international effort to improve climate models with scientific machine learning. She currently serves as an editor for the Journal of Climate, a member on the International CLIVAR Ocean Model Development Panel, and on the CESM Advisory Board.
PhD in Climate Dynamics, 2009
Harvard University
MSc in Environmental Sciences, 2003
Weizmann Institute of Science
BSc in Atmospheric Physics, 2001
Tel Aviv University
International collaboration to improve climate projections
CPT Ocean Transport and Eddy Energy
Processes leading to variability
Harnessing Data and Machine Learning
Temperature, Ocean Velocities & Sea Level Extremes
Selected programs that we participate in and might be of interest to our community NYU CDS Undergraduate Research Program (CURP) in partnership with the National Society of Black Physicists (NSBP); Unlearning Racism in Geoscience (URGE); Mentoring Physical Oceanography Women to Increase Retention (MPOWIR); NYU Proud to be First.
Understanding and Parameterizing Turbulence
Understanding the role of ocean dynamics in climate
Understanding Uncertainty
Designing Ocean Model Ensembles
Global and Regional Projections
Transient tracer-based Investigation of Circulation and Thermal Ocean Change
Addressing the Grand Challenge of regional sea level change prediction
Added and Redistributed Heat from Bronselaer and Zanna, Nature, 2020 on Zenodo.
Ocean Heat Content and Thermosteric Sea level Reconstruction based on 1870-2018 from Zanna et al., PNAS, 2019 is on Zenodo; further details are here.
Datasets associated with “The causes of sea-level rise since 1900” manuscript are here.
Selected Upcoming Talks: One World Mathematics of Climate on July 6th; SIAM Annual Meeting 2021, July 19-23; Data Science Coast To Coast on June 16.
Patterns of Ocean Heat Uptake recording at GISS, based on Bronselaer and Zanna, 2020.
Discovering Equations for Ocean Mesoscale Parameterizations recording at the CESM OMWG Winter Meeting (at 5:44:45), based on Zanna and Bolton, 2020.
Blending Physics and Machine Learning for Climate Modeling recording at the Opening Conference of IMSI.
💡Graduate Students: I am accepting PhD students through CAOS, Applied Math, and CDS. Read carefully the application pages. Note: in CAOS, you are admitted to the program, not an adviser or a research project. If a student is accepted in CAOS, they will be able to discuss research projects with potential advisors during their first year. If a student is interested in working with me, browse through this website and my Google Scholar to get an idea of our research projects.
Undergraduates, Interns and K-12: We are not accepting any applicants for the foreseeable future.