Sciences and Exploration Directorate

Santha Akella

(RESEARCH AST, OCEANOGRAPHIC STUDIES)

Santha Akella's Contact Card & Information.
Email: santha.akella@nasa.gov
Phone: 301.614.5687
Org Code: 610.1
Address:
NASA/GSFC
Mail Code 610.1
Greenbelt, MD 20771
Employer:
NASA

Brief Bio


Dr. Akella works at the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO). His research focuses on the development, testing and operational integration of the next generation atmosphere-ocean coupled, Integrated Earth Analysis System (IESA), with emphasis on the ocean and ocean-atmosphere coupling.

Education


Positions/Employment


Research Oceanographer

GSFC - NASA

October 2018 - Present


Support Scientist

SSAI Inc. - GSFC, NASA

December 2010 - October 2018


Postdoc Researcher

Johns Hopkins Univ. - Baltimore, MD

April 2008 - November 2010


Postdoc Researcher

Texas A&M Univ. - College Station, TX

April 2007 - March 2008


Postdoc Researcher

University of Pennsylvania - Philadelphia, PA

June 2006 - March 2007


Teaching and Graduate Research Assistant

Florida State Univ. - Tallahassee, FL

August 2000 - May 2006

Publications


Refereed

2023. "Impact of the TAO/TRITON Array on Reanalyses and Predictions of the 2015 El Niño." Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 128 (11): [10.1029/2023jc020039] [Journal Article/Letter]

2023. "Direct assimilation of AVHRR satellite radiance measurements in a reanalysis system." Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society [10.1002/qj.4583] [Journal Article/Letter]

2022. "Regional and Seasonal Variability of the Oceanic Thermal Skin Effect." Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 127 (5): [10.1029/2022jc018465] [Journal Article/Letter]

2021. "Saharan dust effects on North Atlantic sea‐surface skin temperatures." Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans [10.1029/2021jc017282] [Journal Article/Letter]

2020. "Saildrone: adaptively sampling the marine environment." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 101 (6): E744–E762 [10.1175/bams-d-19-0015.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2019. "Observational Needs for Improving Ocean and Coupled Reanalysis, S2S Prediction, and Decadal Prediction." Frontiers in Marine Science 6 [10.3389/fmars.2019.00391] [Journal Article/Letter]

2019. "Synthesis of Ocean Observations Using Data Assimilation for Operational, Real-Time and Reanalysis Systems: A More Complete Picture of the State of the Ocean." Frontiers in Marine Science 6 [10.3389/fmars.2019.00090] [Journal Article/Letter]

2018. "Evaluation of NASA GEOS-ADAS Modeled Diurnal Warming Through Comparisons to SEVIRI and AMSR2 SST Observations." Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans [10.1002/2017jc013186] [Journal Article/Letter]

2017. "The Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2)." Journal of Climate 30 5419–5454 [10.1175/jcli-d-16-0758.1] [Journal Article/Letter]

2017. "Assimilation for skin SST in the NASA GEOS atmospheric data assimilation system." Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 143 (703): 1032-1046 [10.1002/qj.2988] [Journal Article/Letter]

2015. "Progress and challenges in short- to medium-range coupled prediction." Journal of Operational Oceanography 8 (sup2): s239-s258 [10.1080/1755876x.2015.1049875] [Journal Article/Letter]

2014. "The impact of the assimilation of Aquarius sea surface salinity data in the GEOS ocean data assimilation system." J. Geophys. Res. Oceans 119 (10): 6974-6987 [10.1002/2014JC010006] [Journal Article/Letter]

2011. "Reservoir Multiscale Data Assimilation Using the Ensemble Kalman Filter." Applied Mathematics 02 (02): 165-180 [10.4236/am.2011.22019] [Journal Article/Letter]

2011. "A dual-weighted trust-region adaptive POD 4-D Var applied to a finite-volume shallow water equations model on the sphere." International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids 68 (3): 377-402 [10.1002/fld.2523] [Journal Article/Letter]

2011. "ASSIMILATION OF COARSE-SCALEDATAUSINGTHE ENSEMBLE KALMAN FILTER." International Journal for Uncertainty Quantification 1 (1): 49-76 [10.1615/int.j.uncertaintyquantification.v1.i1.40] [Journal Article/Letter]

2008. "Different approaches to model error formulation in 4D-Var: a study with high-resolution advection schemes." Tellus A 61 (1): 112-128 [10.1111/j.1600-0870.2008.00362.x] [Journal Article/Letter]

2005. "A comparative study of the performance of high resolution advection schemes in the context of data assimilation." International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids 51 (7): 719-748 [10.1002/fld.1145] [Journal Article/Letter]

2000. "A Finite Difference Model for Prediction of Welding Thermal History (Part 1)." Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Materials 11 (5): [10.1515/jmbm.2000.11.5.381] [Journal Article/Letter]

Non-Refereed

2018. "The Atmosphere-Ocean Interface Layer of NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System Model and Data Assimilation System." NASA Technical Report Series on Global Modeling and Data Assimilation, NASA/TM-2018-104606 51 42pp. [Full Text] [Report]

2018. "Preliminary evaluation of influence of aerosols on the simulation of brightness temperature in the NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System Atmospheric Data Assimilation System." NASA Technical Report Series on Global Modeling and Data Assimilation, NASA/TM-2018-104606 49 44pp [Full Text] [Report]

2016. "Estimation of the Ocean Skin Temperature using the NASA GEOS Atmospheric Data Assimilation System." NASA Technical Report Series on Global Modeling and Data Assimilation, NASA/TM-2016-10460 44 88pp [Report]

2015. "MERRA-2: Initial Evaluation of the Climate." NASA Technical Report Series on Global Modeling and Data Assimilation 43 (NASA/TM–2015–10) 139 pp. [Report]

Awards


  • NASA Honor Award, Group Achievement Award, MERRA-2 Science Team, August, 2019
  • Travel award to present invited talk ``Skin SST assimilation using GEOS-ADAS" at the International workshop on coupled data assimilation, Toulouse, France, October, 2016 [http://www.meteo.fr/cic/meetings/2016/CDAW2016/]
  • Scientific achievement award for successfully implementing skin temperature analysis in GEOS-5, January, 2016

 

Grants


Implementing a physically motivated source of sea salt for aerosol and cloud applications in GEOS-5 through improved wind-wave coupling - NASA - Awarded: 2017-03-17



Effectively constraining both atmosphere and ocean components in an Integrated Earth System Analysis Data Assimilation System - NASA - Awarded: 2020-04-02



Towards Full Utilization of Satellite Sea Surface Salinity for El Niño/Southern Oscillation Prediction - NASA - Awarded: 2020-01-10



Evaluating the tropical Pacific Ocean observing system using ECCO and GMAO systems: impacts on seasonal prediction - NASA - Awarded: 2021-03-11



Developing Coupled Data Assimilation for Integrated Earth System Analysis with GEOS - NASA - Awarded: 2021-03-11



Development of a well calibrated ocean at multiple spatial scales within the GMAO Integrated Earth System Analysis - NASA - Awarded: 2021-03-11



Assessing and Improving the Realism of MOM6 Simulations at Time Scales from Hours to Years - NOAA - Awarded: 2022-09-01


Selected Public Outreach


OceanPredict Coupled Task Team

2021 - Present

  • Co-chair 2021- present
  • Member 2013- present

OceanPredict Data Assimilation Task Team

2017 - Present

  • Member 2017- present

US CLIVAR AMOC Task Team

2021 - Present

  • Member 2021- present

ForeSea - Steering Committee

2021 - Present

A UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development project