Elizabeth Maroon Receives NSF CAREER Award
August 30, 2024
AOS Assistant Professor Elizabeth Maroon has been selected as a recipient of a 2024 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for her project, “Signals from the Deep: The Influence of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge on the Ocean and Climate.” This distinguished grant supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
A Change of Course
Climate science was not always what Maroon envisioned doing. In her early days as an undergraduate at MIT, Maroon had her sights set on the cosmos.
“Originally I wanted to study physics or astrophysics, but then I took geology and geophysical fluid dynamics classes and decided to pursue a career that was more down to Earth, pun intended,” says Maroon.
After double majoring in Physics and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Maroon switched coasts for her graduate studies in Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington. The next stop was Boulder, Colorado as a postdoctoral researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, followed by a project scientist position at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. From there, Maroon returned to her Midwest roots – she’s originally from St. Louis – to join the faculty at UW-Madison AOS.
Drawn to the Currents
Maroon’s research has focused on both atmospheric and oceanographic topics, but it’s the ocean’s meridional overturning circulation (MOC) that she keeps returning to. The MOC, sometimes called the ocean global conveyor belt, plays a vital role in the climate system, particularly in the Atlantic part, aptly named the AMOC.
“In graduate school, I started on a project that tested how tropical precipitation adjusted to big changes in the AMOC. That’s been one thread of my research ever since: investigating how one part of the climate system impacts other parts of it in unexpected ways,” notes Maroon.
She also investigated what happens to the MOC by removing the Rocky Mountains in a global climate model, looked at AMOC trend variability in climate model ensembles, and examined ocean model biases in AMOC.
“This CAREER award is really a continuation of some of my graduate work looking at how the Rocky Mountains impact the AMOC,” says Maroon. “Only this time, instead of removing mountains on land, we’re removing mountains in the ocean via the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. There are a number of places in the ocean where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge affects the ocean’s large-scale flow as well as the variability of that flow. To my knowledge, no one has taken the approach of removing the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in a fully coupled climate model, and there’s been little work on how ocean topography impacts climate variability.”
Turning Science into Sound
Beyond research, the award will support cross-campus education and public outreach through a transdisciplinary ocean, climate, and music project with Professor Johannes Wallmann and composition students at the Mead Witter School of Music.
“Most people in the department don’t know I am a musician,” says Maroon. “I am a classically trained pianist, and at MIT I minored in Music. That’s what’s particularly exciting about this project for me: I’ll get to merge these two parts of my background, the music, and the science.”
Maroon and a group of AOS undergraduates will work on sonification, which is the transformation of data into sound. Students at the School of Music will then incorporate those sonic elements into a science-inspired composition, “all around an ocean or climate-inspired theme,” notes Maroon.
Each spring, the compositions will be performed at a public concert alongside presentations about the science that inspired it. The first concert, with an El Niño theme, is scheduled for April 21, 2025, at the Hamel Music Center.
An Embodiment of AOS
The AOS Strategic Plan outlines the pursuit of scientific insights and cross-campus connections and partnerships. Maroon’s CAREER award is an exemplary example of this.
Says Department Chair Ankur Desai, “Dr. Maroon is an enormously creative oceanographer, which is evident in her CAREER award, both in its research and education. Investigating the role of ocean topography on climate is not well understood. Her study, using a hierarchy of modeling approaches, is bound to find new insights that help us better understand the role of oceans in regulating Earth’s climate. I am also excited to see the creative contributions to integrating music and sound within the research through partnership with students in the Mead Witter School of Music. I can’t wait to hear what that brings to my ears!”
The department looks forward to sharing more details about next spring’s concert as well as updates on research findings. Congratulations, Liz!