Current Projects and Research

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Biography

Prof. Russell received her bachelor’s degree at Harvard University in Environmental Geoscience before earning her Ph.D. at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD in Oceanography.

Before joining the faculty in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona in 2006, she worked at Princeton University at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory during the intensive preparations for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment. Prof. Russell’s work there on the westerly winds led to her greatest research accomplishment so far: the creation of a new paradigm in climate science, namely that warmer climates produce stronger westerly winds. This insight solved one of the long-standing climate paradoxes, the mechanism responsible for transferring one-third of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into the ocean and then back out again during our repeated glacial-interglacial cycles.

Prof. Russell continues her active collaborations with researchers at GFDL, Princeton, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Washington, Monterey Bay Aquarium and Research Institute, University of Maine, BYU, Colorado and Rutgers.

Her recent work includes: earth system prediction, carbon accounting and carbon dioxide removal. She is PI on the recently-submitted Southern Ocean Storms–Zephyr, a $193M NASA mission proposal in collaboration with Ball Aerospace to quantify the global carbon budget – she would be the first female PI of a NASA earth science mission.

In 2021, Russell chaired the Carbon Budget Verification session for the G7: Future of the Seas and Oceans Initiative in support of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and served on three National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine panels. Dr. Russell is one of the 14 scientists behind an amicus curiae brief supporting the plaintiff in the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision on carbon dioxide emissions and climate change, Commonwealth of Massachusetts, et al. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Russell has taught over 8000 students since 2006, serves on the Honors College Advisory Committee, has mentored seven NASA Space Grant Fellows, and was awarded the Provost’s General Education Teaching Award in 2010. She was named as a University Distinguished Professor in 2021.

She lives in Tucson, AZ with her husband and their two children.

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Recent Videos

The link to the original article is: HERE TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — A group of climate scientists who are also moms have binded together to stop climate change. Their goal is to encourage other moms to do the same. Joellen Russell has studied the effects of climate change on our oceans for more than 30... View Article
SOCCOM is a new 6-year observational and modeling research program focused on the role of the Southern Ocean in the anthropogenic carbon budget, ocean biogeochemistry, and climate change.
Joellen Russell, 1885 Society Distinguished Scholar, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences, College of Science, University of Arizona
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