Sara Jean Reinelt

CO₂ Flux, Sea Level Variability, Heat Storage, Global Ocean Circulation, Southern Ocean Dynamics, Polar Oceanography, Climate Change.

I am a Physical Oceanography PhD student in Dr. Chambers' research group in the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida (USF) St. Petersburg. I am a bit of a nontraditional graduate student in that I earned my Bachelors degree in an entirely different field (Enology) than Physical Oceanography, after which I worked in the wine and beer production industries for eight years.

I spent most of my time "harvest hopping" while working in winemaking, meaning I would work one harvest season in the Northern Hemisphere (California or Europe) and then travel to Australia to work a second harvest in the Southern Hemisphere. While this was exhausting, it was also very rewarding and provided me with opportunities I would not have otherwise had. It was because of my winemaking jobs in Australia that I had the opportunity to scuba dive at the Great Barrier Reef and ice climb at Fox Glacier, and my winemaking jobs in California and Hungary allowed me to hike the Camino de Santiago across Spain, among other adventures.

My path to becoming a researcher has been marked by several twists and turns, and it was these experiences that kindled my strong desire to protect our planet. Over several years, I found myself revisiting the idea of a climate-based career change, adding more specificity with each visit until I determined that a scientific approach to addressing the global climate challenge was right for me. It was then that I finally took the plunge and began the pursuit of a fulfilling career in research by studying physics. After completing a rigorous 75 STEM units during my postbaccalaureate studies, I applied to PhD programs in Physical Oceanography and was accepted at USF! I began my PhD program in Fall 2022 and am now using Argo floats, in conjunction with satellite altimetry and GRACE/GRACE-FO data, to examine global and regional steric sea level fluctuations over time.

While physical oceanography is my primary focus, I believe the most inspiring scientists to be multidisciplinary, with the ability to pull knowledge from other specialties, and have thus sought research opportunities in varying fields within oceanography.

In 2020, I attended the Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM) and actively sought out professionals in physical oceanography to meet with and discuss the field and my integration into it; and my experience as an attendee inspired me to set a goal for myself to present a poster at the next meeting in 2022. The contacts I made at OSM led to an internship in the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at the University of Colorado Boulder where I used python to analyze and visualize sea surface temperature, salinity, velocity, and tracers since the last glacial maximum in a paleoclimate model simulation and specifically looked at the deglacial evolution of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circuculation (AMOC) within the model. My internship with INSTAAR piqued my interest in ocean circulation and paleoceanography and led me to seek a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) to further enhance my understanding.

In the summer of 2021, I worked in a chemical paleoceanography research group as a part of the Research Internships for Ocean Sciences (RIOS) REU at Rutgers University where I increased the planktic stable isotope analysis resolution in a sediment core from the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean. From this, I created an age model using stratigraphy based on δ¹⁸O analysis and compared and analyzed δ¹³C in three cores to aid in pinpointing circulation changes since the last glaciation. My short-term goal of presenting at 2022 OSM was achieved from this REU, as I gave an oral presentation at the conference!

In Fall 2021, I worked in the Shark Lab at California State University Long Beach, where I used Python to visualize and analyze AUV data collected off the coast of California. My primary focus was examining current structure and assessing biological productivity. I spatially and temporally inspeacted chlorophyll 'hot spots', both independently and in relation to temperature and salinity data, with the overarhching goal of enhancing comprehension of juvenile while shark migration patterns.

In summer 2022, I joined Dr. Chambers’ research group at USF. Here, I wrote a Python-based program to spatially and temporally match satellite-derived eddy locations, identified by sea surface height, with Argo floats. I will soon be utilizing this program to match biogeochemical Argo floats from the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observation and Modeling (SOCCOM) program with eddy locations within the Southern Ocean to investigate CO₂ flux.

Since beginning my PhD program under Dr. Chambers in Fall 2022, I have contributed to a project centered on global ocean heat uptake. This project seeks to improve steric sea level anomaly estimations using Argo floats, satellite altimetry, and the GRACE/GRACE-FO mission. For this work, I have developed a Python-based program to align Argo float profile locations with an Argo climatology dataset and directly calculate steric sea level anomalies for each Argo float profile relative to the climatology.

*Additionally, in 2020 I was the project lead for a statistical COVID-19 study through which we found that males and females in NYC had significantly different infection and fatality rates in the early stages of the pandemic. During that time I was also a member of the Saddleback College Robotics team, where I assisted with construction of a Mars Rover for the 2021 University Rover Challenge held by the Mars Society. My work on this team included researching realistic techniques and equipment to be added to the rover for in situ mineral determination and life detection. While neither of these experiences directly relate to oceanography, my work on the robotics team piqued my interest and began my fascination with underwater robotics, which I believe to be the future of oceanographic data collection and exploration in remote areas.