EARTH & SPACE RESEARCH

Earth & Space Research (ESR) conducts basic oceanographic and climate research that is funded from public sources that include the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Our program is subdivided, for management and funding purposes, into a number of specific research projects that geographically span a broad segment of the Earth's oceans and that encompass topics ranging from microstructure mixing processes to the global-scale interactions closely related to climate change. Our research is at the academic level, and results are published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. For descriptive purposes, our work can conveniently be broken down into the following five program areas. 1) Space-based observations of the global ocean, including strong technological development components and use of measurements for analyses of global climate change processes. 2) Field-based studies in the Southern Ocean that seek to understand and quantify the mechanisms that contribute to the deep-ocean thermohaline circulation. 3) Data-based studies focused on understanding upper ocean circulation and interannual fluctuations in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. 4) Field and analytical studies of ocean turbulent mixing processes, with an emphasis on the high latitude oceans. 5) Educational outreach, with an emphasis on helping non-specialists to understand climate change and its implications.