MEES Graduate Program

dr. James Carton

robert E. Menzer Director of Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences Graduate Program

Dr. James Carton is the Robert E. Menzer Director of the University System of Maryland’s (USM) interdisciplinary Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences (MEES) Graduate Program appointed July 2026. Carton is a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science (AOSC) who holds a joint appointment in the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and is a faculty member in the Applied Mathematics & Statistics, and Scientific Computation graduate program at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP).

Carton joined UMCP in 1985 as an assistant professor and served as AOSC associate chair from 2001 to 2007 and as chair from 2007 to 2018. Since 1990, he has been an adjunct professor at Horn Point Laboratory.

A Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and a physical oceanographer, Carton is interested in the ocean’s role in climate. He uses computer models and observations to elucidate the ocean's role in climate variability and change. More specifically, he studies tropical climate, El Niño and the Southern Oscillation, North Pacific and polar climate variability, and anthropogenic climate change. He has authored more than 125 publications, and his works have been cited more than 11,000 times.

During his tenure as department chair, the department created new bachelor’s degree and professional master’s degree programs and expanded its existing graduate program. Under Carton’s leadership, the department also expanded its research collaborations and broadened its research portfolio through faculty hiring in areas at the forefront of climate research, including hydrology, cryospheric science and data assimilation.

He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in atmospheric and oceanic sciences from Princeton University, M.S. in oceanography from the University of Washington, and B.S.E. in electrical engineering from Princeton University.