Rate My Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato

Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato serves as Regius Professor in Ocean Sciences and Professor in Physical Oceanography at the University of Southampton within the Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences. A University of Southampton alumnus, he obtained a BSc (Hons) in Physics with Oceanography in 1995, followed by a PhD in Physical Oceanography from the University of Liverpool and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of East Anglia. He returned to Southampton in 2005 as a lecturer and advanced to full professor in 2011. His career encompasses leadership in major research grants from UKRI and the European Research Council, including directing the NERC-EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training NEXUSS on smart and autonomous environmental observation and co-leading the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training Mathematics for our Future Climate.

Naveira Garabato's research specializes in the physical processes driving ocean circulation and mixing, with a focus on the Southern Ocean and Antarctic margins. He investigates turbulent diapycnal mixing from breaking internal gravity waves, symmetric instabilities in the upper ocean and bottom boundary layers, centrifugal instabilities adjacent to ice shelves facilitating meltwater export, and interactions between isopycnal stirring by mesoscale eddies and diapycnal mixing. His pioneering observational techniques, including lowered acoustic Doppler current profilers for turbulence rates, vertical microstructure profilers, and deep autonomous underwater vehicles, have advanced understanding of boundary-enhanced mixing and its climate impacts. He connects these processes to the ocean carbon sink, nutrient cycles, palaeoceanography, geomorphology, and marine ecosystems through collaborations yielding process parameterizations for circulation models. Key publications include 'Vigorous lateral export of the meltwater outflow from beneath the Pine Island Ice Shelf' (2017), 'Poleward shift of Circumpolar Deep Water threatens the East Antarctic Ice Sheet' (2022), 'An annual cycle of submesoscale vertical flow and restratification in the upper ocean' (2019), and contributions to 'Ocean Mixing' (2021). His influence is marked by awards such as the EGU Outstanding Young Scientist Award (2008), Philip Leverhulme Prize (2010), Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award (2014), Challenger Society Medal (2020), and EGU Fridtjof Nansen Medal (2023). In July 2024, he presented the inaugural Regius Professor in Ocean Sciences Annual Lecture, 'Rewriting the Tale of Deep-Ocean Upwelling,' highlighting turbulence from tides, currents, and seafloor interactions.