Henry G. Peterson
About
I am a postdoctoral associate working with Raffaele Ferrari in MIT's Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences Department. I received my Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering from Caltech in 2025, followed by a brief postdoc, both with Jörn Callies. My undergraduate degree was in applied mathematics at UC Berkeley.
In my research, I use a combination of theoretical and numerical models to describe how small-scale
ocean dynamics—for varying definitions of small
—shape the global climate system. For instance,
centimeter-scale turbulence is thought to be crucial for generating the upwelling necessary for
closing the meridional overturning circulation. My work shows that there is a two-way coupling between
the local response to bottom-enhanced mixing and the basin-scale flow. As part of this work, I developed
an open-source finite element model of the large-scale ocean
circulation written in Julia. Check out the
project highlight on the Schmidt Academy for
Software Engineering webpage!
On the other hand, lateral transport of heat and tracers in the ocean is heavily influenced by the dynamics of
O(10–100 kilometer)-wide eddies. To better understand how these small
-scale features shape the
climate system, I am working to couple high-resolution global
Oceananigans.jl simulations to a realistic atmosphere
model as part of the CliMA project.
Contact: henrygp at mit dot edu.
Publications
Peterson, H. G. and J. Callies: Connecting the local response to abyssal mixing to the basin-scale circulation, J. of Phys. Oceanog. 56, 431–450. © Copyright 2026 AMS. [Journal, PDF]
Peterson, H. G. and J. Callies, 2023: Coupling between abyssal boundary layers and the interior ocean in the absence of along-slope variations. J. of Phys. Oceanog. 53, 307–322. © Copyright 2023 AMS. [Journal, arxiv, PDF]
Peterson, H. G. and J. Callies, 2022: Rapid spin up and spin down of flow along slopes. J. of Phys. Oceanog. 52, 579–596. © Copyright 2022 AMS. [Journal, arxiv, PDF]
González-Cataldo, F., F. Soubiran, H. G. Peterson, and B. Militzer, 2020: Path integral Monte Carlo and density functional molecular dynamics simulations of warm dense MgSiO3. Phys. Rev. B 101, 024107. [Journal, arxiv, PDF]
Peterson, H. G. and W. R. Boos, 2020: Feedbacks and eddy diffusivity in an energy balance model of tropical rainfall shifts. npj Clim. and Atm. Sci. 3, 11. [Journal, PDF]
Links
Last updated: October 2026