Welcome Dr Marcel du Plessis to the Polar Glider group!

Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Contact: marcel.du.plessis@gu.se

Marcel will be working from the GU Marine Science Department at Carl Skottsbergs gata 22B, Gothenburg

Brief Bio: Dr Marcel du Plessis joined the Polar Gliders Group at GU in March 2020 as a SO-CHIC (Southern Ocean Carbon and Heat Impact on Climate) Postdoctoral Fellow. Previously, Marcel was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observatory at the CSIR in South Africa and before that completed his PhD and BSc at the University of Cape Town. His doctoral research focused on using both glider observations in the Subantarctic Zone and numerical models to better understand the processes driving mixed layer variability at intra-seasonal time scales. Throughout his PhD and postdoc, Marcel has worked closely with the Polar Glider Group, with 6 visits to GU over the previous 4 years!

Dr du Plessis has joined the SO-CHIC project to work on WP1, where he will utilise autonomous surface vehicles, ships, and gliders to estimate high-resolution air-sea fluxes and upper ocean mixing processes with a focus in the Weddell Gyre, a region strongly linked to upwelling and CO2 outgassing. He hopes his research outcomes will have a positive impact on the scientific community, providing insight about time and space scales of upper ocean variability which are vital for modelling parameterisations that guide future climate modelling efforts. These efforts will support major international scientific assessments of the climate state, such as the IPCC.