Eric P. Chassignet
RSMAS/MPO
University of Miami
4600 Rickenbacker Causeway
Miami, FL 33149
Telephone: 305.421.4041
echassignet@rsmas.miami.edu

Dr. Chassignet's areas of interest are general oceanic circulation from the complementary perspectives of ocean modeling and ocean observations. His emphasis is on the study of the thermohaline circulation, western boundary currents, associated eddies and their impact on the world ocean circulation.

Dr. Chassignet is part of a consortium funded by the National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP) to validate a HYbrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM) with data assimilation capabilities. The hybrid coordinate extends the geographic range of applicability of traditional isopycnic coordinate circulation models such as the Miami Isopycnic Coordinate Model (MICOM) (the basis of the present hybrid code) toward shallow coastal seas and unstratified parts of the world ocean. The vertical coordinate in HYCOM is isopycnal in the open, stratified ocean, but smoothly reverts to a terrain-following coordinate in shallow coastal regions, and to pressure coordinates in the mixed layer and/or unstratified seas. The 5-year goal of this consortium is to address the principal objective of the U.S. Global Ocean Data Assimilation Experiment (GODAE) by 2003, namely the depiction of the three-dimensional ocean state in near-real time.