Dr. Robert Korty
| Title | Assistant Professor |
| Research Interests | Climate dynamics, paleoclimates, hurricane-ocean interactions, and the role of ocean mixing in climate. |
| Education | Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005 B.A., University of Virginia, 1999 |
| Office Location | Room 1110C, O&M Bldg |
| Office Phone | 979-847-9090 |
| Fax | 979-862-4466 |
| korty at tamu.edu | |
| Mailing Address |
Department of Atmospheric Sciences Texas A&M University 3150 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-3150 |
Research Programs
My principal research interests lie in large-scale climate dynamics, which motivate projects designed to comprehend past, present, and future climate states. I am particularly interested in paleoclimates such as the late Cretaceous period and the early Eocene epoch when the planet was ice-free, exotic plants and animals lived above the Arctic Circle, and the planet's meridional temperature gradient was small compared to the present climate. Understanding how the atmosphere and oceans transported sufficient heat from the Tropics to higher latitudes in the presence of a weak temperature gradient has been a vexing problem, confounding contemporary numerical models and general circulation theory alike. During these times, deep convection may have been more important to the maintenance of the tropospheric stratification at middle and high latitudes than it is presently, and the relative contribution of baroclinic eddies and convection to the stratification likely varies with climate state. Numerical climate simulations, observational analyses (of the present atmosphere), and conceptual models are used to tackle these questions.
I am also interested in hurricane-ocean interactions, which may play some role in larger-scale problems, but are fascinating in their own right. Tropical cyclones deposit momentum into the surface mixed-layer of the ocean beneath them, which leads to an isolated but vigorous bout of mixing with cold thermocline waters through a shear-instability. This mixing lowers the temperature of the upper ocean (routine evidence can be seen in satellite images of the sea surface temperatures in the wake of a hurricane) and simultaneously mixes heat down the water column. The recovery of this wake is a complex problem of differing time-scales: surface heating restores the sea surface temperature after about a week, but the evolution of interior density anomalies is poorly understood. I am investigating this using coupled atmosphere-ocean models and observational data.
Recent Publications
Pauluis, O., A. Czaja, and R. Korty, 2008: The global atmospheric circulation in moist isentropic coordinates. Submitted.
Korty, R. L., and T. Schneider, 2008: Hadley circulation extent and storm track location in dry atmospheres. Submitted.
Pauluis, O., A. Czaja, and R. Korty, 2008: The global atmospheric circulation on moist isentropes. Science, in press.
Korty, R. L., K. A. Emanuel, and J. R. Scott, 2008: Tropical cyclone-induced upper ocean mixing and climate: application to equable climates. J. Climate, 21, 638-654.
Korty, R. L., and T. Schneider, 2007: A climatology of the tropospheric thermal stratification using saturation potential vorticity. J. Climate, 20, 5977-5991.
Korty, R. L., and K. A. Emanuel, 2007: The dynamic response of the winter stratosphere to an equable climate surface temperature gradient. J. Climate, 20, 5213-5228.
Emanuel, K., C. DesAutels, C. Holloway, and R. Korty, 2004: Environmental control of tropical cyclone intensity. J. Atmos. Sci., 61, 843-851.
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