Jinlun
Zhang
University of Washington

Dr. Zhang is interested in understanding how air-ice-ocean interaction in polar oceans affects polar and global climate. He investigates properties of polar ice-ocean systems using large-scale sea ice and ocean models. His recent work has focused on the evolution of the Arctic sea ice cover and the upper ocean in response to significant climate change recently observed in the northern polar ocean.

He has developed a coupled global ice-ocean model to study the responses of sea ice to different conditions of surface heat fluxes and the effects of sea ice growth/decay on oceanic thermohaline circulation. He is also interested in developing next-generation sea ice models which capture anisotropic nature of ice dynamics. He has developed efficient sea ice dynamics models that are particularly useful for stable, high-resolution modeling.

His research results have been published in Journal of Physical Oceanography, Journal of Geophysical Research, Journal of Climate, Monthly Weather Review, Geophysical Research Letters, Ocean Modeling, and other scientific journals.