Peter R. Gent

Peter R. Gent

Senior Research Associate

Oceanography Section
Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory
National Center for Atmospheric Research
P O Box 3000
Boulder
CO 80307-3000


Curriculum Vitae

Peter R. Gent

The main focus of my work over the past 25 years has been the development of an ocean model for use in climate models. This model has a resolution of about 1 degree and does not resovle the very energetic mesoscale eddy field, which has a length scale of a few tens of kilometers in the high northern and southern latitudes. I have worked a lot on how to parameterize the effects of these eddies on the ocean distribution of temperature, salt and other passive tracers. This parameterization was originally proposed in 1990 (first paper on my CV page), but the Gent et al (1995) paper explains it much better, and is much easier to read. I also wrote a review of this work, called "20/20 Hindsight", that was published in Ocean Modelling in 2011: see CV page. A colleague of mine, Rick Smith who used to work at Los Alamos, has put together an 11 minute video on youtube about his contributions to ocean modeling, including an anisotropic version of the eddy parameterization designed for use in much higher resolution ocean models: see the 2004 paper on CV page. This video shows some nice graphics of sea surface temperature from a high resolution global ocean model, and is found at:
World Ocean & Climate Change
I work in the Oceanography Section whose main responsibility is to develop and maintain ocean and sea ice models suitable for studies of the climate. The section plays an important role in developing, maintaining and using the Community Earth System Model, which is developed by NCAR and the USA climate community. The ocean component of the CESM2 is a full depth, z-coordinate model that is based on the POP code. The CESM2 sea ice component is based on the CICE code. More information on these model components can be found at these web sites:


Community Earth System Model
CESM2 Ocean Component
CESM2 Sea Ice Component

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Last updated August 23, 2022