Future Jobs for Students

Future Career Opportunities

There are significant opportunities for graduates from our program to pursue a rewarding career. A unifying feature of the disciplines of meteorology, oceanography, and climate science is applied mathematics and therefore much of the theoretical machinery we teach is common to all these areas. This will allow our graduates to carry out fundamental research in all three areas. It is well known that many of the leading scientists in all these disciplines have strong applied mathematical or mathematical physics backgrounds. As a consequence we expect our graduates to be at the very forefront of future research.

Funding opportunities in atmosphere-ocean science are currently excellent. This is because of the strong societal and economic impacts of climate and weather phenomenon. Areas currently attracting keen interest from funding agencies include global warming, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, monsoon variability, and polar research. Our faculty have strong credentials in these areas and are therefore able to position graduates to take advantage of the opportunities.

Potential Future Employers

There exist many excellent research institutions with a recent history of hiring good graduates with a math background. Examples include:

• Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton - GFDL
• National Center for Atmospheric Research - NCAR
• International Research Institute for climate prediction - IRI
• International Pacific Research Center - IPRC
• Max Planck Institut fur Meteorologie - MPI fur Meteorologie
• Scripps Institute for Oceanography - SIO
• Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory - LDEO
• European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting - ECMWF
• International Arctic Research Center - IARC

Research Funding Sources

The major agencies funding atmosphere ocean science include:

• National Science Foundation (NSF) funds research in the areas of:
  • Atmospheric Science
    Including:
    • Climate Dynamics
    • Large-scale Dynamic Meteorology
  • Ocean Sciences
    Including:
    • Physical Oceanography
  • Earth Sciences
  • Polar Research
  • Global Change
    Including:
    • Climate Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction
• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) whose Office of Global Programs (OGP) funds research on climate variability in the Pacific, Atlantic and the Americas.
• National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) who fund earth science projects dealing with the use of satellite sensing in all areas of climate.
• Office of Naval Research which fund a variety of projects dealing with mainly oceanography but also aspects of meteorology of interest to the navy (e.g. hurricanes).