The relationship between atmosphere and oceans is a major factor in the dynamics of Earth’s climate. One of the most important regions for this interaction is the Bay of Bengal. Dr. Mahadevan, a leading researcher on this area, emphasizes that the Bay of Bengal impacts more of humanity than any other ocean area in the world. She explains how ocean-atmosphere dynamics create the monsoons that deliver freshwater to more than a third of the human population on this planet, and how, in turn, the freshwater deposited by the monsoons impacts the ocean’s structure and circulation
Amala Mahadevan is a leading researcher in the fields of physical oceanography and climate, the oceanic carbon cycle, and biogeochemical distributions. Dr. Mahadevan and members of her WHOI lab have developed advanced models and analytics to investigate physical ocean processes and their implications for the productivity and distribution of phytoplankton, and the transport and mixing of properties. She has developed a non-hydrostatic ocean model suited to modeling limited domains in order to capture meso- and sub-mesoscale phenomena.