Mark Bourassa

My main research interests are air/sea interaction, remote sensing related to air/sea interaction and precipitation, and data fusion. These interests are applied to a wide range of activities (e.g., tropical disturbances, diurnal variability in surface fluxes and related variables, decadal variability in surface fluxes, impacts of episodic ocean forcing, and physical models of energy and momentum exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere).

I am particularly fond of using in situ and remotely sensed observations, combined with models of the atmospheric boundary-layer, to better understand air/sea interaction and the surface characteristics to which a scatterometer responds.

I am currently a faculty member in the Department of Meteorology, and a member of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Institute. I also serve as the team leader for the NASA Ocean Vector Wind Science Team; I co-chair the US CLIVAR working group on high latitude surface fluxes; and I am an active member in Shipboard Automated Meteorological and Oceanographic Systems (SAMOS) Working Group, the SEAFLUX Working Group, and the NOAA Expert Team on the State of the Ocean. These groups endeavor to improve our knowledge of air/sea interaction and its consequences on the larger Earth/Atmosphere/Cryosphere/Ocean system, with a wide range of applications.