Sarah Gille

This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject, potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral. Please help improve it by replacing them with more appropriate citations to reliable, independent, third-party sources. (December 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Sarah Gille is a physical oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography known for her research on the role of the Southern Ocean in the global climate system.

This section needs expansion with: date and place of birth, and other early life details, based in independent (third-party) citations. You can help by adding to it. (December 2021)

The daughter of John Gille and Ellen Fetter Gille, Sarah Gille earned an undergraduate B.S. from Yale University in 1988, and a Ph.D. in 1995 in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology–Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program.^{[citation needed][1]} Her Ph.D. research used satellites to measured spatial and temporal variability in sea surface heights in the Southern Ocean, including modeling of those data.^{[2][3][4][non-primary source needed]}

After her doctoral work, Gille trained further as a postdoctoral investigator at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of East Anglia.^{[when?][citation needed]}

Gille then accepted a faculty position at the University of California, Irvine.^{[when?][citation needed]} In 2000 she moved back to the University of California, San Diego where, as of this date,^[when?] she is jointly affiliated with Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.^{[5][third-party source needed]}

Gille's research centers on the Southern Ocean where she works on air-sea exchange and historical changes in climate in the region. Gille uses floats to study the movement of water masses in the Southern Ocean,^[6] and combined data from the 1990s in the Southern Ocean with historical data to identify warming at mid-depths that was concentrated within the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.^[7] Gille's research includes measuring winds from space using the QuickSCAT platform,^[8] and assimilating tracer and float data from the Southern Ocean into global models.^[9]

As of December 2021, Gilles remained a principal investigator of the historically NSF-funded "Diapycnal and Isopycnal Mixing Experiment in the Southern Ocean" (DIMES), a field program of the United States and the United Kingdom to measure isopycnal (horizontal) and diapycnal (vertical) mixing of the waters of the Southern Ocean, along with studying the tilting isopycnals of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.^[10][11][12] "Tilting isopycnals" refer to oceanic water masses with the same density that tilt or slope with depth. In the ocean, the density of water changes due to variations in temperature and salinity, leading to the formation of surfaces of constant density, known as isopycnals. Tilting isopycnals indicate a change in the density structure of the ocean and can have an impact on ocean circulation and the transport of heat, salt, and other properties.^[13] As of December 2021, Gilles was also a Process Studies investigator at the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project (SOCCOM), which aims to characterise the Southern Ocean's influence on global climate.^[14] SOCCOM is based in the High Meadows Environmental Institute (previously the Princeton Environmental Institute) at Princeton University and funded by the National Science Foundation.^[15]

• Kelly, Kathryn A.; Gille, Sarah T. (1990). "Gulf Stream surface transport and statistics at 69°W from the Geosat altimeter". Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. 95 (C3): 3149–3161. Bibcode:1990JGR....95.3149K. doi:10.1029/JC095iC03p03149. ISSN 2156-2202.
• Gille, Sarah T. (1994). "Mean sea surface height of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current from Geosat data: Method and application". Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans. 99 (C9): 18255–18273. Bibcode:1994JGR....9918255G. doi:10.1029/94JC01172. ISSN 2156-2202.
• Gille, S. T. (15 February 2002). "Warming of the Southern Ocean Since the 1950s". Science. 295 (5558): 1275–1277. Bibcode:2002Sci...295.1275G. doi:10.1126/science.1065863. PMID 11847337. S2CID 31434936.
• Gille, Sarah T. (15 September 2008). "Decadal-Scale Temperature Trends in the Southern Hemisphere Ocean". Journal of Climate. 21 (18): 4749–4765. Bibcode:2008JCli...21.4749G. doi:10.1175/2008JCLI2131.1. S2CID 7982458.
• Jones, Julie M.; Gille, Sarah T.; Goosse, Hugues; Abram, Nerilie J.; Canziani, Pablo O.; Charman, Dan J.; Clem, Kyle R.; Crosta, Xavier; de Lavergne, Casimir; Eisenman, Ian; England, Matthew H. (2016). "Assessing recent trends in high-latitude Southern Hemisphere surface climate". Nature Climate Change. 6 (10): 917–926. Bibcode:2016NatCC...6..917J. doi:10.1038/nclimate3103. hdl:10871/24938. ISSN 1758-678X. S2CID 26866623.
• Swart, Neil C.; Gille, Sarah T.; Fyfe, John C. & Gillett, Nathan P. (2018). "Recent Southern Ocean Warming and Freshening Driven by Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Ozone Depletion". Nature Geoscience. 11 (11): 836–841. Bibcode:2018NatGe..11..836S. doi:10.1038/s41561-018-0226-1. S2CID 135193051. Retrieved 14 December 2021.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

While in graduate school, Gille received the 1995 Carl-Gustav Rossby Award of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[16] In 2000, as a faculty member, she received the Zeldovich Award from the Committee on Space Research and the Russian Academy of Sciences.^[17]

In 2021, Gille was recipient of the Sverdrup Gold Medal of the American Meteorological Society.^[18]

Gille was named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2015,^[19] and of the American Meteorological Society in 2021.^[18] The 2015 AGU announcement cited her "for exceptional contributions to advancing the understanding of the dynamics of the Southern Ocean and its role in the climate system".^[19]

• Bindoff, Nathaniel L. (2018). "Climate Change: Warming and Freshening Trends". Nature Geoscience. 11: 803–804. doi:10.1038/s41561-018-0239-9. S2CID 133778017. Retrieved 14 December 2021. Prof. Bindoff, Physical Oceanography, University of Tasmania and a Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate System Science, comments that the Swart et al. (2018) study estimates the relative importance of the various factors factor contributing to Southern Ocean change, and that it is the first to do so.
• Freedman, Andrew (28 September 2018). "Energy & Environment: Scientists Solve a Southern Ocean Climate Change Mystery". Axios.com. Retrieved 14 December 2021. Mr Freedman presents a popular account of the Swart et al. (2018) study, providing comments by Gille, and independent comments from non-participant Bindoff (see above).
• The Alliance of International Science Organizations (13 December 2021). "GSF: Global Scientific and Technological Cooperation Still Mainstream" (press release). PRNewsWire.com. Retrieved 14 December 2021. [Notes] Sarah Gille, physical oceanographer of Scripps Institution of Oceanography... [as] Sverdrup Gold Medal Winner of American Meteorological Society (2021).

• Sarah Gille publications indexed by Google Scholar
• Our Warming Ocean on YouTube, August 24, 2020 interview with Gille on University of California Television
• A Scientist's Life in 99 Seconds: Physical Oceanographer Sarah Gille on YouTube, February 7, 2020