People

Dr. Alex O. Gonzalez (he/him/his)

Assistant Scientist II, Principal Investigator

Alex grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA and always had a love for math and science; he was particularly interested in the science behind natural disasters. His interest in meteorology picked up when he was a teenager after seeing the movie, Twister. He studied meteorology and mathematics at Penn State University, where he graduated with a B.S. in meteorology and a minor in mathematics in 2008. He attended graduate school at Colorado State University, graduating with an M.S. in 2011 and Ph.D. in 2015 in atmospheric science. His M.S. and Ph.D. work was primarily on developing idealized atmospheric dynamical models of the Hadley circulation, equatorial waves, and the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ).

After graduate school, he was a postdoc for 2.5 years with a joint appointment between UCLA and NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab where he worked on improving physical understanding and climate model fidelity of the Madden-Julian Oscillation and equatorial Rossby waves through ideas rooted in moisture mode theory. After UCLA/NASA, Alex became an Assistant Professor of Meteorology at Iowa State University from 2018–2022 where he continued his work on the ITCZ, the MJO, and equatorial waves. He joined WHOI's Physical Oceanography Department as an Assistant Scientist in the Summer of 2022.

Since arriving at WHOI, Alex has expanded his research expertise into the area of air-sea interaction, marine low clouds, and extreme rainfall – combining theory with field observations and modeling. In particular, he has become more experienced with organizing and collecting field observations, such as atmospheric sounding systems (weather balloon launches), surface meteorological sensors, and cloud instrumentation (e.g., ceilometers, all-sky cameras). His broad research interests include:

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