Linz receives early career grant from NASA

Marianna Linz, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has received a New Investigator Program (NIP) award from NASA.

The award is designed to support outstanding scientific research and career development of scientists and engineers at the early stage of their professional careers.

The award will support Linz’s research into the impact of climate change on stratospheric circulation.

Stratospheric circulation is like a powerful conveyor belt, pulling warm air up from the equator and pushing it down toward the poles. The strength of this circulation significantly impacts the amount of water vapor, chemicals, and ozone transported around the planet.

Climate models predict that increased concentrations of greenhouse gas will strengthen stratospheric circulation but so far, no change has been observed. Linz’s research will use historical and current space-based remote sensing, balloon borne, and aircraft measurements of atmospheric composition to better understand the variability and trends in stratospheric circulation.

“We will address the question: is the stratospheric circulation strength increasing,” said Linz. “This is a critical question to answer because stratospheric circulation affects radiation and air quality, and we want to be able to predict how those will change with global warming.”

Linz graduated from Harvard in 2011 as the first joint concentrator in Chemistry and Physics and Earth and Planetary Sciences. She joined the SEAS faculty in 2019 after receiving her Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Joint Program