Senior Scientist
Research focus: Ocean surface currents and the upper ocean mixed layer
Kathleen Dohan began her scientific career as a Mathematics major and a Physics minor during her undergraduate at Simon Fraser University. Her interest turned towards environmentally motivated research during her work terms with Environment Canada. She obtained her PhD in Applied Mathematics at the University of Alberta in 2004 working with Bruce Sutherland within the Fluid Dynamics group. Her thesis involved both laboratory experiments and numerical simulations to study internal wave generation from a turbulent mixed region.
She continued to study the interaction between turbulence and stratification as a postdoctoral researcher with Russ Davis at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Using mooring data from Ocean Storms she studied the dynamics of inertial oscillations and storm-driven upper ocean mixing during the fall deepening stage of the mixed layer evolution and its implications for mixed layer models.
Looking to apply her small-scale studies to even larger scales, Kathleen joined ESR in 2007 to work on the Ocean Surface Current Analyses- Realtime (OSCAR) project. She has been the Principal Investigator of OSCAR since 2008. The OSCAR project uses the satellite-sensed fields of sea surface height, ocean vector winds, and sea surface temperature together with simplified models of upper ocean mixed layer physics to calculate surface currents.
Kathleen became President of ESR in September 2015.
Current Research Projects:
- Ocean Surface Current Analyses- Real time (OSCAR)
- NASA Ocean Vector Winds Science Team project: Development of OSCAR Wind Driven Ocean Currents in the New Constellation and Across Decades
- NSF Collaborative Research: Pathways of Circumpolar Deep Water to West Antarctica from profiling float and satellite measurements
- NASA Physical Oceanography project: Estimating Eddy Populations and Impacts from New Eddy-Resolving Altimetric Maps
- NASA Ocean Salinity Science Team project: The Advective-Diffusive Balance and Diurnal Variability of Ocean Surface Salinity
- NASA IDS project: East Meets West: Dynamic Biogeography of the Subarctic North Pacific
Publications
For more information, see Kathleen Dohan on Google Scholar.
PUBLISHED
Dohan, K. (2017). Ocean Surface Currents from Satellite Data, J. Geophys. Res.- Oceans, doi 10.1002/2017JC012961.
Lumpkin, R., G. Goni, and K. Dohan, (2017). Surface Currents, in “State of the Climate in 2016”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 98 (8), S81–S84.
Lumpkin, R., G. Goni, and K. Dohan, (2016). Surface Currents, in “State of the Climate in 2015”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 97 (8) S82-S84.
Dohan, K., Goni, G. and R. Lumpkin, (2015). Surface Currents, in “State of the Climate in 2014”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 96, S76-82, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2015BAMSStateoftheClimate.1
Dohan, K., Kao, H-Y, Lagerloef, and G.S.E. Lagerloef (2015) The Freshwater Balance Over the North Atlantic SPURS Domain from Aquarius Satellite Salinity, OSCAR Satellite Surface Currents, and Some Simplified Approaches, Oceanography, 28 (1), 46-55.
Lumpkin, R. Goni, G. and K. Dohan (2014). Surface Currents, in “State of the Climate in 2013”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 95, S65–S67. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2014BAMSStateoftheClimate.1
Lumpkin, R., G. Goni, and K. Dohan, (2013). Surface Currents, in “State of the Climate in 2012”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 94, S62-S65, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2013BAMSStateoftheClimate.1.
Lee, T., G. S. E. Lagerloef, M. M. Gierach, H.-Y. Kao, S. Yueh, and K. Dohan (2012). Aquarius reveals salinity structure of tropical instability waves, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L12610, doi:10.1029/2012GL052232.
Lumpkin, R., G. Goni, and K. Dohan, (2012). Surface Currents, in “State of the Climate in 2011”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 93, S75-S78, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2012BAMSStateoftheClimate.1.
Lumpkin, R., G. Goni, and K. Dohan, (2011). Surface Currents, in “State of the Climate in 2010”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 92(6), S161-S163.
Dohan, K. and R. E. Davis (2011). Mixing in the Transition Layer During Two Storm Events. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 41, 42-66.
Dohan, K., and N. Maximenko, (2010). Monitoring ocean currents with satellite sensors. Oceanography, 23 (4), 94-103. IPRC-749.
Dohan, K., Lagerloef, G., Bonjean, F., Centurioni, L., Cronin, M., Lee, D., Lumpkin, R., Maximenko, N., Uchida, H., (2010). Measuring the global ocean surface circulation with satellite and in situ observations. Proceedings of the “OceanObs’09: Sustained Ocean Observations and Information for Society” Conference (Vol. 2), Venice, Italy, 21-25 September 2009, Hall, J. Harrison, D. E., and Stammer, D., Eds., ESA Publication WPP-306,2010.
R. Lumpkin, G. Goni, and K. Dohan, (2010). Surface Currents, in “State of the Climate in 2009”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 91, S65-S69.
R. Lumpkin, G. Goni, and K. Dohan, (2009). Surface Current Observations, in “State of the Climate in 2008”. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 90, S1-S196.
Dohan, K. and B. R. Sutherland (2005) Numerical and Laboratory Generation of Internal Waves from Turbulence. Dynamics of Atmospheres andOceans, 40, 43-56.
Sutherland, B. R., M. R. Flynn and K. Dohan (2004) Internal Wave Excitation from a Collapsing Mixed Region. Deep Sea Research II, Vol. 51, Issues 25-26, 2889-2904.
Dohan, K. and B. R. Sutherland (2003) Internal Waves Generated from a Turbulent Mixed Region. Physics of Fluids, 15 (2), 488-498.
Dohan, K. and B. R. Sutherland (2002) Turbulence Time Scales in Mixing Box Experiments. Experiments in Fluids, 33, 709-719.
Dohan, K. and P.H. Whitfield (1997) Identification and Characterization of Water Quality Transients Using Wavelet Analysis. I. Wavelet Analysis Methodology. Water Sci. Tech., 36 (5), 325-335.
Whitfield, P.H. and K. Dohan (1997) Identification and Characterization of Water Quality Transients Using Wavelet Analysis. II. Application to Electronic Water Quality Data. Water Sci. Tech., 36 (5), 337-349.