Student Speak

Spring 2007

Name: Michelle M. Gierach
Class: First year doctoral candidate in marine science
Hometown: Orlando Fla.

Your adviser is Subrahmanyam Bulusu who teaches satellite oceanography in the Marine Science Program and Department of Geology and you're studying Gulf of Mexico hurricanes and climate impacts. Tell us about that work. My research involves using satellite observations and model simulations to analyze the upper ocean response to hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the responses examined include cold wakes and phytoplankton blooms. Phytoplankton blooms and cold wakes are observed after a hurricane passes over an oceanic basin and are caused by cold subsurface water and nutrients being injected into the surface layer.

You recently were invited to give a seminar at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and published a paper on satellite data analysis of the upper ocean response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita (2005) in the Gulf of Mexico. Tell us about the seminar and the paper. The seminar was last December in the Oceanography Division of the Jet Propulsion Lab. I presented the biological and physical effects of hurricanes Ivan (2004), Katrina (2005), Rita (2005), and Wilma (2005) in the Gulf of Mexico using satellite observations and model simulations. The paper with Dr. Bulusu was published in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters.

I don't think the general public is generally aware this type of information is available from satellites. Are people often surprised when you tell them about your work? I believe that the majority of the populace does not know about it. Mainly, when referring to hurricanes and their associated impacts people think in terms of land. They don't realize that hurricanes dramatically affect the ocean and that oceans, in turn, affect hurricanes.

Your undergraduate and masters degrees are in meteorology from Florida State University. How did you develop an interest in meteorology? My grandmother was living in Homestead, Fla., when it got hit by Hurricane Andrew and I saw the results first-hand as a fifth-grader. That's when I decided I wanted to study weather. It's funny to talk with other meteorology majors and find out how they got interested in the field. It's always because of some catastrophic weather phenomenon they witnessed.

What are your career plans? I still have some time before graduation, but as for career plans, I would like to continue in the research field and work for a U.S. federal government agency. It has always been a dream of mine to be aboard a reconnaissance aircraft during a scheduled research flight into a hurricane.

4/07