Farewell to Maurice Huguenin
Maurice first came to Australia in 2017 as a Master’s exchange student to write his thesis. For his thesis, he used MOM-SIS to investigate the mechanisms driving interannual ocean heat variability. In 2019, he came back to Australia for his PhD because he liked working with his Master’s thesis supervisors – Ryan Holmes and Matthew England – and because he misse
d Friday frisbees at the beach.
In his doctoral research, he used all three configurations of ACCESS-OM2 to investigate the processes and dynamics of global to regional ocean heat uptake. What kept he going through the loooong COVID pandemic years was the amazing support from the climate modelling community and the people at the Climate Change Research Centre at UNSW.
Last year, he started a Postdoc with ACEAS and he is now exploring the link between recent shifts in the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation and Weddell Sea dense shelf water formation. He will complete the second year of my Postdoc at WHOI in the US.
While he may leave Australia soon, he will still be zooming in from overseas every once in a while for meetings.
Recently he published a study with Ryan Holmes, Paul Spence and Matthew England in Geophysical Research Letters:
Huguenin, M. F., Holmes, R. M., Spence, P., & England, M. H. (2024). Subsurface warming of the West Antarctic continental shelf linked to El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Geophysical Research Letters, 51, e2023GL104518. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL104518
In this study, they isolate the footprint of ENSO on West Antarctic continental shelf temperatures using the 1/10° ACCESS-OM2 model. They found that El Niño increases cross-shelf flow of warm Circumpolar Deep Water, which then has the potential to increase melting of floating ice shelves from below.
For more, read this article in the Conversation on the main findings and their implications of this publication: