Lynne Talley

Lynne Talley (born May 18, 1954) is an American physical oceanographer.

Talley is Professor of Physical Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography^[1] and has spent many months on research ships serving as chief scientist and collecting oceanographic hydrography data. She has a strong record of continuous participation in international steering groups and oversight committees for collection and use of oceanographic data.^[2] Talley is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Early Life and Education

Talley was born May 18, 1954 in Schenectady, New York. She attended Marple-Newtown High School, Newtown Square, PA in 1971.

She received her B.A. in Physics in 1976 from Oberlin College in Oberlin Ohio. In 1976, Talley also received a Bachelor of Music (B.M.) in Piano Performance from Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio. For a year following Oberlin, she studied piano performance with Carl Seeman at the Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg, Germany. She continued her studies with Beatrice Erdeley, from the New England Conservatory of Music. After moving to San Diego, she studied for a few years with Pam Madsen and Karen Follingstad (SDSU).

In 1982, Talley completed a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the Joint Program in Oceanography from MIT and WHOI. After a postdoctoral research position at Oregon State University, she joined the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1984.

Career and Impact

Talley has worked at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD since 1984, and has been a Distinguished Professor since 2012. While at Scripps, her research has combined analysis of ocean observations with advanced theoretical work to describe and map large-scale circulation. Talley’s research focuses on the general circulation of the ocean and the role of various oceanic and atmospheric conditions that affect ocean currents and property distributions, including salinity.^[3] Her work involves analysis of data from most of the world’s oceans, depicting the movement of heat, salinity, and water masses, and the formation of water masses, particularly in subpolar regions.^[2]

From 2004-2007 she was a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) Working Group and a lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report Working Group I chapter of the group's final report titled: "Observations: Oceanic Climate Change and Sea Level",^[4][5] which was released in February 2007. The report earned contributing scientists a share of the Nobel Peace Prize later that year.^[6] She is currently a lead author on the same topic for the Fifth Assessment Report.

In addition to numerous academic publications, she has published a widely used graduate level textbook on descriptive physical oceanography, and two oceanographic atlases.^[7][8] Her research and international/national committee work include a focus on ocean climate variability/change. She has played a leadership role in scientific planning and execution of international programs, including the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) of the 1990s and the CLIVAR/CO2 Repeat Hydrography Program of the 2000s to present.

In 2000, Talley and co-principal investigator, Daniel Rudnick, worked with moorings and hydrography on the collaborative Okhotsk Sea dense water formation project.^[9] In 2005-2006, Talley spent time in the field using hydrography, CTD, and profiling floats to understand Antarctic Intermediate Water formation in the southeast Pacific.^[10] Overlapping this time period, between 2005 and 2007, Talley also participated as part of the CLIMODE team on the CLIVAR Mode Water Dynamics Experiment (CLIMODE).

In 2009, Talley spent time on sabbatical at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as a Visiting Scientist.^[11] The following year she took sabbatical at the Universite de Grenoble Joseph Fourier for sciences, health, technologies.

Talley has a long history of seagoing experiences. As a graduate student in 1978 she joined the hydrography cruise through the Southwestern South Pacific aboard the R/V Knorr. Between 1993 and 1997, Talley returned to the R/V Knorr serving as chief scientist on three separate WOCE hydrography cruises in the Pacific, Indian Ocean, and Subpolar North Atlantic. She has additionally sampled the Pacific and Atlantic waters as part of the WOCE Field Program aboard various research vessels including the R/V T. Washington (1984, co-chief scientist; 1991, chief scientist), R/V T. Thompson (1985, chief scientist), R/V Oceanous (1988, co-chief scientist), and R/V Melville (1989, chief scientist).^[12] In 1999, Talley served as chief scientist on the R/V Revelle sampling hydrography in the Japan/East Sea and then again as co-chief scientist aboard the Khromov in 1999 and 2000.^[13] In 2014, she served as chief scientist for the GO-SHIP hydrography, CTC, float deployment cruise in the Southern Pacific aboard the R/V N.B. Palmer.

In 2016, Talley will lead the observation team of the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM)^[14][15] and her research group will be involved directly in float, hydrographic and satellite data analysis, interfacing with the Southern Ocean State Estimate and data-model comparisons. She will also act as co-chair to the steering committee of the ongoing U.S. Repeat Hydrography.^[16]

Awards and honors

Awards

• 2003 - Huntsman Award (Bedford Institute of Oceanography)
• 2001 - Rosenstiel Award (Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami)
• 1987 - Presidential Young Investigator (National Science Foundation)

Honours

• 2010 - Fellow, The Oceanography Society
• 2008 - Fellow, American Meteorological Society
• 2006 - Fellow, American Geophysical Union
• 2003 - Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1984 - Mellon Foundation Fellowship (Scripps Institution of Oceanography)
• 1976 - Phi Beta Kappa
• 1976 - Sigma Xi

References

External links

• Lynne Talley's web page at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• Lynne Talley on Google Scholar
• Map of Lynne Talley's ocean cruises