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M. Susan Lozier

Ronie-Richele Garcia-Johnson Emerita Professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences
Earth and Climate Sciences
Box 90328, Durham, NC 27708-0227
Environmental Hall, Room 5119, 9 Circuit Drive, Durham, NC 27708

Overview


Susan Lozier is a physical oceanographer with interests in large-scale ocean circulation. Upon completion of her PhD at the University of Washington, she was a postdoctoral scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She has been a member of the Duke faculty since 1992. Professor Lozier was the recipient of an NSF Early Career Award in 1996, was awarded a Bass Chair for Excellence in Research and Teaching in 2000, received a Duke University Award for Excellence in Mentoring in 2007, was named an American Meteorological Society Fellow in 2008, a Distinguished Professor in 2012, a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2014 where she has been elected as president elect. She begins her two-year term as president-elect on Jan. 1, 2019, and then will serve a two-year term as AGU president beginning in 2021. She was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2015. She currently serves as the past-president of The Oceanography Society and is the international lead for the OSNAP (Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program) observing system.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Ronie-Richele Garcia-Johnson Emerita Professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences · 2019 - Present Earth and Climate Sciences, Nicholas School of the Environment
Ronie-Richele Garcia-Johnson Distinguished Professor Emerita · 2019 - Present Earth and Climate Sciences, Nicholas School of the Environment

In the News


Published June 24, 2025
What the Ocean’s Changing Color Means
Published January 31, 2019
The Cold Waters West of Europe Play a Powerful Climate Role
Published October 17, 2018
Susan Lozier to Serve as President-Elect of American Geophysical Union

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Recent Publications


Characterizing the Interannual Variability of North Atlantic Subpolar Overturning

Journal Article Geophysical Research Letters · October 16, 2025 Variability of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) has drawn extensive attention due to its impact on the global redistribution of heat and freshwater. Here we present the latest time series (2014–2022) of the Overturning in the Subpolar ... Full text Cite

Greener green and bluer blue: Ocean poleward greening over the past two decades.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · June 2025 Although the global greening associated with climate change is well documented on land, similar trends in the ocean have not been thoroughly identified. Using satellite observations of ocean chlorophyll a (Chl) concentration, we show that the surfac ... Full text Cite

When Simplification Leads to Ambiguity: A Look at Two Ocean Metrics for the Subpolar North Atlantic

Journal Article Geophysical Research Letters · February 16, 2025 The AMOC FINGERPRINT and GYRE INDEX are two widely used metrics by the oceanographic community to assess whether northward ocean heat transport, and consequently temperature variability in the subpolar North Atlantic, is primarily governed by the Atlantic ... Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


Collaborative Research: Enhancing our Understanding of North Atlantic Deep Water Pathways using Nonlinear Dynamics Techniques

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2019 - 2024

Collaborative Research: Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic - Labrador Basin and Floats

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2018 - 2021

Collaborative Research: Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic-the Irminger and Iceland Basins

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2018 - 2021

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Education, Training & Certifications


University of Washington · 1989 Ph.D.
Purdue University · 1979 B.S.

External Links


Lozier website