Dr. Geoffrey (Jake) Gebbie
Associate Scientist with Tenure
Physical Oceanography
Contact Information:
Work: 508-289-2801
ggebbie@whoi.edu
Mailing Address:
266 Woods Hole Road Clark 213A (MS #29)
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole, MA 02543
Research Interests
- Physical oceanography and climate dynamics.
- Estimating past ocean circulation and its role in paleoclimate, using physical models and biogeochemical records.
- Analysis of climate variability through state estimation, especially the synthesis of general circulation models and observations.
How did we get here? Before tackling what the climate of the 21st Century will look like, we have very little data that actually tells us how ocean properties came to look the way they do. Large changes have occurred since the Little Ice Age over the last few hundred years, and before that, even larger changes occurred at the end of the Last Ice Age over the last 20,000 years. My focus is to combine the best observations from the instrumental record as well as paleoceanographic archives to reconstruct the evolution of the climate-relevant properties of heat and carbon leading up to the present day. Due to the lack of observations over decadal to millennial timescales, I use inverse methods to combine physical/biogeochemical models and the data records. Basic questions remain unanswered. Where did the CO2 in today's atmosphere come from? How are the alternating warm and cool periods of the distant past still affecting the ocean today? Past climate reconstructions ultimately will inform our understanding of the future climate of the 21st Century and beyond.
Selected Recent Publications
See the Publications section for a complete list.
- Gebbie, G., and P. Huybers, 2019: “The Little Ice Age and 20th Century deep Pacific cooling,” Science, 363 (6422), pp. 70-74, doi:10.1126/science.aar8413. Download HMS Challenger observations Note: Due to shutdown of the federal government, data files are not presently available at a permanent archive. Please retrieve data at this temporary site.
- Simms, A.R., and L.E. Lisiecki, G. Gebbie, P.L. Whitehouse, and J.F. Clark, 2019: “Balancing the last glacial maximum (LGM) sea-level budget,” Quaternary Science Reviews, 205, 143-153, doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.12.018.
- Oppo, D.W., G. Gebbie, K-F. Huang, W.B. Curry, T.M. Marchitto, and K.R. Pietro, 2018: “Data constraints on Glacial Atlantic Water Mass Geometry and Properties,” Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 33, 1013-1034, doi:10.1029/2018PA003408. Download
- Zhao, N., O. Marchal, L. D. Keigwin, D. E. Amrhein, and G. Gebbie, 2018: “A synthesis of deglacial deep-sea radiocarbon records and a test of their (in)consistency with modern ocean circulation,” Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, 33, doi:10.1002/2017PA003174.
- Purkey, S.G., W.M. Smethie, G. Gebbie, A.L. Gordon, R.E. Sonnerup, M.J. Warner, and J.L. Bullister, 2017: “A Synoptic View of the Ventilation and Circulation of Antarctic Bottom Water from Chlorofluorocarbons,” Annual Review of Marine Science, doi:10.1146/annurev-marine-121916-063414. PDF
- Gebbie, G., and T.-L. Hsieh*, 2017: “Controllability, not chaos, key criterion for ocean state estimation,” Nonlin. Processes Geophys., 24, 351–366, doi:10.5194/npg-24-351-2017. *-Summer Student Fellow. PDF
- Gebbie, G., G. J. Streletz, and H. J. Spero, 2016: “How well would the modern-day property
distributions be known with paleoceanographic-like observational sampling?” Paleoceanography, 31, doi:10.1002/2015PA002917. PDF (Highlighted as an Eos Research Spotlight.) - Gebbie, G.,C.D. Peterson, L.E. Lisiecki, and H.J. Spero, 2015: "Global-mean marine d13C and its uncertainty in a glacial state estimate," Quaternary Science Reviews, 125, doi://10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.08.010. PDF Download numerical output
- Thornalley, D. J. R., H. Bauch, G. Gebbie, S. Barker, and L. Skinner, 2015: "A poorly ventilated deep Arctic Mediterranean during the last glacial," Science, 349, 706-710.
- Gebbie, G., "How much did Glacial North Atlantic Water shoal?" Paleoceanography, 29, doi:10.1002/2013PA002557. PDF including auxiliary material. Download numerical output
Awards
- Tenured Associate Scientist Award, WHOI, 2018
- James E. and Barbara V. Moltz Fellow, 2015-present
- NASA Earth System Science Fellow, 2000−2003
- Outstanding Student Paper, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, 2002
- Outstanding Student Poster, World Ocean Circulation Experiment Meeting, 2002
Advising and Supervising
- Postdoctoral Investigator: Thomas Chalk (now at National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, U.K.)
- Graduate Students: Gregory Streletz (UC Davis), Ailin Brakstad (U. Bergen), Laura Fleming (MIT/WHOI)
- Summer Student Fellows: Maya Chung (2018), Celina Scott-Buechler (2017), Yuxin Zhou (2015), Tsung-Lin Hsieh (2013), Joey Wenig (2012)
- Thesis Committee Member for: Fern Gibbons (Ph.D., 2011), Holly Dail (Ph.D., 2012), Dan Amrhein (M.S., 2014), Ning Zhao (Ph.D., 2017), Marianna Linz (Ph.D., 2017)
Education
Ph.D., Physical Oceanography, MIT/WHOI Joint Program, 2004.
B.S., Atmospheric Sciences, UCLA, 1997.
News
- Tracking a snow globe of microplastics
- The deep Pacific is a climate time capsule from the ‘little ice age,’ 19th century ship records show
- Reconstructing the Ocean's Murky Past
- Oceanographers’ New Research Tools: Virtual Reality and 3D Printing
- New York Times: With Kinect Controller, Hackers Take Liberties