Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in the context of Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research

Princeton University is a private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. The institution moved to Newark in 1747 and then to its Mercer County campus in Princeton nine years later. It officially became a university in 1896 and was subsequently renamed Princeton University.

The university is governed by the Trustees of Princeton University and has an endowment of $37.7 billion, the largest endowment per student in the United States. Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering to approximately 8,500 students on its main campus spanning 600 acres (2.4 km) within the borough of Princeton. It offers postgraduate degrees through the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of Architecture and the Bendheim Center for Finance. The university also manages the Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and is home to the NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and has one of the largest university libraries in the world.

Geophysical fluid dynamics, in its broadest meaning, is the application of fluid dynamics to naturally occurring flows, such as lava, oceans, and atmospheres, on Earth and other planets.

Two physical features that are common to many of the phenomena studied in geophysical fluid dynamics are rotation of the fluid due to the planetary rotation and stratification (layering).

Venkatachalam Ramaswamy (V. "Ram" Ramaswamy) is the Director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), studying climate modeling and climate change. "A leading climate scientist", his work is cited as supporting evidence for significant stratospheric climate change. He focuses in particular on radiative transfer models and the hydrologic cycle in the atmosphere. He has actively supported the development of supercomputing approaches that enable researchers to achieve higher resolution and greater complexity in climate models. As a lead author involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Ramaswamy's contributions (along with the contributions of many scientists) was recognised by the joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC. He was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2025.