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Physical Scientist

Biogeochemistry, Atmospheric Chemistry, and Ecosystems Division

Curriculum vitae

Contact Information:

phone (609) 452-6563

email lori.sentman@noaa.gov

Focus Areas:

  • Role of past climate on climate mean state and variability
  • Climate variability on multi-decadal to millennial time scales
  • Impact of historical land use change on biosphere carbon stores / fluxes
  • Biophysical effects of land use change on climate
  • Sensitivity of CO2 fertilization on climate

Lori Thompson Sentman

Research Projects

Developing and using comprehensive climate and biosphere models of the atmosphere-ocean-ice-land system, Earth System Models (ESMs), to identify and elucidate physical, biogeochemical and ecological mechanisms, assess and understand the predictability of the Earth system on seasonal and longer time scales, and evaluate the impact of anthropogenic activity on the Earth system. Research interests include:

  • understanding the mechanistic role of past climate on global ocean circulation, climate mean state and variability, and climate-carbon cycle interactions and feedbacks to better understand and predict future climate
  • evaluating the ability of the ESM to capture observed variability on multi-decadal to millennial time scales, and determining what fraction of the variability is attributable to “external” forcing and what fraction reflects purely internal variability
  • assessing the impact of historical land use change on terrestrial biosphere carbon stores and fluxes
  • isolating the biophysical effects of land use change on climate
  • determining the sensitivity of CO2 fertilization on climate
  • evaluating of the role of secondary vegetation regrowth on the terrestrial carbon cycle
  • execution, analysis and data publishing of the ESMs for the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5)

Research Highlights

  • Sentman, L. T., Dunne, J. P., Stouffer, R. J., Krasting, J. P., Toggweiler, J. R., Broccoli, A. J., in press: The Mechanistic Role of the Central American Seaway in a GFDL Earth System Model. Part 1: Impacts on Global Ocean Mean State and Circulation. Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology. DOI:10.1029/2018PA003364. July 2018.
  • Ding, Yanni, Gennady Chepurin, Georgiy Stenchikov, Alan Robock, Lori T. Sentman, and John Krasting (2014): Ocean Response to Volcanic Eruptions in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) Simulations. Journal of Geophysical Research – Oceans.DOI: 10.1002/2013JC009780.
  • Dunne, John P., Jasmin John, Elena Shevliakova, Ronald J Stouffer, John P Krasting, Sergey Malyshev, P C D Milly, Lori T Sentman, Alistair Adcroft, W F Cooke, Krista A Dunne, Stephen M Griffies, Robert W Hallberg, Matthew J Harrison, Hiram Levy II, Andrew T Wittenberg, Peter Phillipps, and N Zadeh, 2013: GFDL’s ESM2 global coupled climate-carbon Earth System Models Part II: Carbon system formulation and baseline simulation characteristics. Journal of Climate. DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00150.1. 10/12.
  • Dunne, John P., Jasmin John, Alistair Adcroft, Stephen M Griffies, Robert W Hallberg, Elena Shevliakova, Ronald J Stouffer, W F Cooke, Krista A Dunne, Matthew J Harrison, John P Krasting, Sergey Malyshev, P C D Milly, Peter Phillipps, Lori T Sentman, Bonita L Samuels, Michael J Spelman, Michael Winton, Andrew T Wittenberg, and N Zadeh, October 2012: GFDL’s ESM2 global coupled climate-carbon Earth System Models Part I: Physical formulation and baseline simulation characteristics. Journal of Climate, 25(19), DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00560.1.
  • Sentman, Lori T., Elena Shevliakova, Ronald J Stouffer, and Sergey Malyshev, October 2011: Time scales of terrestrial carbon response related to land-use application: Implications for initializing an earth system model. Earth Interactions, 15(30), DOI: 10.1175/2011EI401.1.
  • Shevliakova, Elena, S W Pacala, Sergey Malyshev, P C D Milly, and Lori T Sentman, et al., June 2009: Carbon cycling under 300 years of land use change: Importance of the secondary vegetation sink. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 23, GB2022, DOI: 10.1029/2007GB003176. [Abstract PDF].
    Also appears in Nature Reports Climate Change | Vol 5 | April 2009.
  • Anderson, Jeffrey L., Ventakramani Balaji, Anthony J Broccoli, W F Cooke, Thomas L Delworth, Keith W Dixon, Leo J Donner, Krista A Dunne, Stuart Freidenreich, Stephen T Garner, Rich Gudgel, C Tony Gordon, Isaac M Held, Richard S Hemler, Larry W Horowitz, Stephen A Klein, Thomas R Knutson, P J Kushner, Amy R Langenhorst, Ngar-Cheung Lau, Z Liang, Sergey Malyshev, P C D Milly, Mary Jo Nath, Jeff J Ploshay, V Ramaswamy, M Daniel Schwarzkopf, Elena Shevliakova, Joseph J Sirutis, Brian J Soden, William F Stern, Lori T Sentman, R John Wilson, Andrew T Wittenberg, and Bruce Wyman, December 2004: The New GFDL global atmosphere and land model AM2-LM2: Evaluation with prescribed SST simulations. Journal of Climate, 17(24), 4641-4673.