Galen A. McKinley

Galen McKinley is Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Columbia University and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. She is an ocean, carbon cycle and climate scientist. Her research focuses on the physical, chemical and ecological drivers of the global ocean’s uptake of anthropogenic carbon. Regional and global ocean and climate models, and data science techniques applied to large community-compiled datasets are her primary tools. Professor McKinley earned a BS in Civil Engineering from Rice University (1995) and a PhD in Climate Physics and Chemistry from MIT (2002). Her postdoctoral work was at Instituto Nacional de Ecologia in Mexico and Princeton University. From 2004-2017, she served on the faculty in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at University of Wisconsin – Madison. Selected honors include the 2020 Ocean Science Voyager award from the American Geophysical Union, 2012-2013 Defense Science Study Group, and the Class of 1955 Teaching Award at UW-Madison in 2011.

Education

  • PhD 2002 MIT, Climate Physics and Chemistry 
  • BS 1995 Rice University, Civil Engineering

Gloege, L., M. Yan, T. Zheng and G.A. McKinley (2022) Improved quantification of ocean carbon uptake by using machine learning to merge global models and pCO2 data, JAMES, doi:10.1029/2021MS002620

Fay, A.R., L. Gregor, P. Landschützer, G.A. McKinley, N. Gruber, M. Gehlen, Y. Iida, G.G. Laurelle, C. Rödenbeck, J. Zeng (2021) SeaFlux: harmonization of air-sea CO2 fluxes from surface pCO2 data products using a standardised approach, ESSD doi:10.5194/essd-13-4693-2021

Ridge, S.M., and G.A. McKinley (2021) Ocean carbon uptake under aggressive emission mitigation, Biogeosciences doi:10.5194/bg-18-2711-2021

Gloege, L., G.A. McKinley, P. Landschützer, A. Fay, T. Frölicher, J.C. Fyfe, T. Illyina, S.D. Jones, N.S. Lovenduski, C. Rödenbeck, K.B. Rodgers, S. Schlunegger and Y. Takano (2021) Quantifying errors in observationally-based estimates of ocean carbon sink variability, Global Biogeochem. Cycles doi:10.1029/2020GB006788

McKinley, G.A., A.R. Fay, Y. Eddebbar, L. Gloege and N. Lovenduski (2020) External forcing explains recent decadal variability of the ocean carbon sink, AGU Advances doi: 10.1029/2019AV000149

McKinley, G.A., A.R. Fay, N. Lovenduski, and D.J. Pilcher (2017) Natural variability and anthropogenic trends in the ocean carbon sink, Ann. Rev. Mar. Sci. 9: 125-150, doi:10.1146/annurev-marine-010816-060529

McKinley, G.A., D.J. Pilcher, A.R. Fay, K. Lindsay, M.C. Long, and N. Lovenduski (2016) Timescales for detection of trends in the ocean carbon sink, Nature, doi:10.1038/nature16958

Fay, A. R., and G. A. McKinley (2014) Global ocean biomes: mean and temporal variability, Earth Syst. Sci. Data 6, 273-284, doi:10.5194/essd-6-273-2014

Fay, A. R., and G. A. McKinley (2013), Global trends in surface ocean pCO2 from in situ data, Global Biogeochem. Cycles 27, doi:10.1002/gbc.20051