My interests are in oceanography and climate, biogeochemical cycles in the ocean -the ocean's role in the carbon cycle, phytoplankton and biogeochemical distributions and air-sea gas exchange. I use modeling to investigate physical ocean processes and their implications on ocean biogeochemistry. I have developed a non-hydrostatic ocean model suited to modeling limited domains in order to capture local mesoscale and small-scale phenomena. Consequently I have worked on the problem of open boundary conditions for ocean models, the transport of nutrients by frontal and mesoscale processes in the subtropical oceans, the large-scale transport and distribution of radiocarbon (¹⁴C),predictability of the large-scale wind-driven circulation using singular vectors, the dynamics of the shelfbreak front and coastal flows over topography, patchiness in the distributions of various biogeochemical tracers at the sea surface, and mesoscale variability of sea surface pCO_2. More recently, I have been working on the interaction between hydrodynamics and vegetation in coastal areas. A broad objective of my research is to understand the feedbacks between physical processes, the autotrophic (plant) community and the carbon cycle.

I am Research Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Boston Univeristy. Previously, I was Visiting Associate Professor in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire, Senior Research Associate at the Univeristy of Cambridge and a fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. I spent a few years as Staff Scientist at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. and as a postdoctoral associate at the University of Chicago, and at Harvard University and MIT. My Ph.D. is in Environmental Fluid Mechanics (Civil Engineering) from Stanford University.

Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

• Non-hydrostatic ocean modeling
• Open boundary conditions in ocean models
• Upper ocean nutrient supply for phytoplankton
• Carbon14 as a tracer of global circulation
• What can singular vectors tell us about predictability
• Atmospheric angular momentum: Can we close the budget with satellite wind data?
• Tracers in the Ocean: Why they differ in their spatial heterogeneity at the surface
• Sea surface pCO₂: How it responds to upwelling and mixing
• Convection in the ccean
• Lateral exchange across the shelfbreak front
• Flow over aquatic vegetation
• Vertical motion at ocean fronts; an investigation of nonhydrostatic effects
• Submesoscale ocean processes
• Channel formation by erosion

• Environmental Hydrodynamics and Hydrology Fall Semester, 2004-05 DEAS, Harvard University
• Applied Mathematics 21a Fall Semester, 2003-04,04-05 DEAS, Harvard University
• Applied Mathematics 21b Spring Semester, 2003-04,04-5 DEAS, Harvard University
• Freshman Seminar: Climate Change: Past, Present and Future Fall Semester, 2005-06, Harvard University

 

Mahadevan, A., J. Oliger and R.L. Street, 1996
A Non-hydrostatic Mesoscale Ocean Model, Part 1: Well-posedness and Scaling, (pdf)
Journal of Physical Oceanography, 26, (9), 1168-1880.

Mahadevan, A., J. Oliger and R.L. Street, 1996
A Non-hydrostatic Mesoscale Ocean Model, Part 2: Numerical Implementation,(pdf)
Journal of Physical Oceanography, 26, (9), 1181-1900.

Mahadevan, A. and D. Archer, 1998
Modeling a Limited Region of the Ocean, (pdf)
Journal of Computational Physics, 145, (2), 555-574.

Mahadevan, A. and D. Archer, 2000
Modeling the Impact of Fronts and Mesoscale Circulation on the Nutrient Supply and Biogeochemistry of the Upper Ocean,(pdf)
Journal of Geophysical Research, 105, (C1), 1209-1225.

Mahadevan, A.,  2001
Surface Trends of Bomb Radiocarbon in the Pacific, (pdf)
Marine Chemistry, 73, 273-290.

Mahadevan, A., J. Lu, P. Malanotte-Rizzoli and S.P. Meacham, 2001
The Predictability of Large-Scale Wind-driven Flows, (pdf)
Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, 8, (6), 449-465.

Mahadevan, A. and  J.W. Campbell, 2002
Biogeochemical Patchiness at the Sea Surface, (pdf)
Geophysical Research Letters,  29, (19), 1926, doi:10.1029/2001GL014116.

Ponte, R.M., A. Mahadevan, J. Rajamony and  R.D. Rosen, 2003
Uncertainties in Seasonal Wind Torques over the Ocean, (pdf)
Journal of Climate,  16, 715-722.

Mahadevan, A. and J.W. Campbell, 2003
Biogeochemical Variability at the Sea Surface: How it is Linked to Process Response Times,(pdf)
Color Figures (pdf large file)
A Handbook of Scales in Aquatic Ecology, CRC Press, 2003 

Mahadevan, A., M. Levy and L. Memery, 2004
Mesoscale Variability of Sea Surface   pCO₂ : What does it respond to? (pdf)
Global Biogeochemical Cycles (in press)

Mahadevan, A., 2004
Spatial heterogeneity and its relation to processes in the upper ocean (pdf)
published in Ecosystem Function in Heterogenous Landscapes, eds. G. Lovett, C. Jones, M. Turner and K. Weathers

LaCasce, J., and A. Mahadevan, 2006
Estimating subsurface horizontal and vertical velocities from sea surface temperature (pdf)
Journal of Marine Research, 64, 695-721.

Mahadevan, A., 2006
Modeling vertical motion at ocean fronts: Are nonhydrostatic effects relevant at submesoscales? (pdf)
Ocean Modelling, 14, 222-240.

Mahadevan, A. and A. Tandon, 2006
An analysis of mechanisms for submesoscale vertical motion at ocean fronts (pdf)
Ocean Modelling, 14, 241-256.

Thomas, L. A. Tandon and A. Mahadevan, 2007
Submesoscale ocean processes and dynamics (pdf)
In press (revised July 28, 2007).

Mahadevan, A., L. Thomas, and A. Tandon, 2008
Technical Comment: Eddy/wind interactions stimulate extraordinary mid-ocean plankton blooms (pdf)
Science 320, 448b, DOI: 10.1126/science.1152111.

Jonsson,B., J. Salisbury, J. Campbell and A. Mahadevan,
Large reversals in continental shelf production and export of phytoplankton carbon revealed by satellite
Submitted, (revised March 2008).

Jonsson,B., J. Salisbury, and A. Mahadevan,
Extending the use and interpretation of ocean satellite data with Lagrangian modeilng
Submitted to Int. J. of Remote Sensing, 2008.

Salisbury, J., D.Vandermark, C. Hunt, J. Campbell, B. Jonsson, A. Mahadevan, W. McGillis and H. Xue,
Episodic riverine influence on surface DIC in the coastal Gulf of Maine
Submitted to Estuarine Coastal and Shelf Science, 2008

Mahadevan, A., A. Tandon and R. Ferrari,
Rapid changes in mixed layer stratification driven by submesoscale instabilities and winds
Submitted to GRL, July 2008

Mahadevan, A.,
Wind-driven exchange of nitrate at the continental shelf-break
In preparation

Mahadevan, A., M. Levy and L. Memery,
Sensitivity of sea surface pCO2 to localized upwelling
In preparation