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Mia Sophie Specht

Department Climate Variability
Group Director's Research Group (CVR)
Position Postdoc
phone +49 40 41173-168
Email mia-sophie.specht@mpimet.mpg.de
Room B 209

Research Interests

  • Circulation in the tropical Atlantic Ocean 
  • Vertical mixing in tropical oceans 
  • Ocean - Atmosphere interactions
  • Tropical Instability Waves 
  • Comparison of model output and observations 

Snapshot of simulated sea surface temperature, illustrating a typical Tropical Instability Wave surface pattern in the Atlantic Ocean

Bastin, Swantje, et al. "Sensitivity of the tropical Atlantic to vertical mixing in two ocean models (ICON-O v2. 6.6 and FESOM v2. 5)." Geoscientific Model Development 18.4 (2025): 1189-1220.

Specht, M.S., Jungclaus, J. and Bader, J., 2024. Seasonality of subsurface shear instabilities at tropical instability wave fronts in the Atlantic Ocean in a high‐resolution simulation. Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 129(8), p.e2023JC020041.

Hohenegger, C., et al. (2023). ICON-sapphire: Simulating the components of the Earth system
and their interactions at kilometer and subkilometer scales. Geoscientific Model Develop-
ment 16.2: 779-811. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-779-2023

Specht, M.S., Jungclaus, J. & Bader, J. (2021). Identifying and Characterizing Subsurface Tropical Instability Waves in the Atlantic Ocean in Simulations and Observations. Journal of Geophysicial Research: Oceans, 126, e2020JC017013. doi.org/10.1029/2020JC017013. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JC017013

 

 

Academic Education and Research Experience 

since 2023 | PostDoc at the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany

2019 - 2023 | PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology, Hamburg, Germany as part of the International Max-Planck Research School on Earth System Modelling (IMPRS-ESM) 

Thesis title: On the Spatio-Temporal Variability of Instability Waves in the Atlantic Ocean and their Impact on Mixing

Supervisors: Dr. Johann Jungclaus, Dr. Jürgen Bader, Prof. Dr. Jochem Marotzke

2016 - 2018 | Master of Science in “Climate Physics”, Focus on Physical Oceanography

Thesis title: Variability of Atlantic Water Inflow onto the Northeast Greenland Continental Shelf

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Inga M. Koszalka, Prof. Dr. Torsten Kanzow

2013 - 2016 | Bachelor of Science in “Geophysics/Oceanography”, Focus on Physical Oceanography

Thesis title: Untersuchung von interannualen Schwankungen im Ozean und der Telekonnektion zwischen einzelnen Ozeanen

Supervisor: Dr. Thomas Pohlmann

Sea going experiences 

2018 | Research cruise on R/V Polarstern (PS114), Position: Fram Strait and 79N
Glacier

2017 | Research cruise on R/V Polarstern (PS109), Position: 79N Glacier

2016 | Research cruise on R/V Meteor (M132), Position: Benguela Upwelling System

2016 | Research cruise on R/V Poseidon (POS503), Position: Denmark Strait