Andy Tompson

Portrait of  Andy Tompson

  • Title
    Hydrologist
  • Email
    tompson1@llnl.gov
  • Phone
    (925) 422-6348
  • Organization
    Not Available

Andrew F. B. Tompson is a hydrologist in the Atmospheric, Earth, and Energy Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and served as leader of the Hydrologic Sciences Group between 2002 and 2008. His research interests include the physics of multiphase fluid flow, chemical transport, and chemical transformation in porous media and terrestrial environmental systems; applications of radiochemistry and isotope hydrology to topics in radionuclide fate and migration in terrestrial environmental systems; integrated analyses of coupled processes linking water, chemical, and energy fluxes in and between the subsurface, land surface and lower atmosphere; and coupled mathematical modeling of these processes using techniques in advanced computation, stochastic analysis, and uncertainty quantification. His work has addressed integrated groundwater supply, groundwater contamination, and reservoir engineering problems, with recent efforts in pollution of systems affected by nuclear testing, geothermal prospect evaluation, groundwater availability in arid environments, aquifer storage and recovery, and hydrologic impacts from regional climate change. He has led or been a member of numerous interdisciplinary research teams involving engineers, hydrologists, geologists, geochemists, radiochemists, applied mathematicians, computational scientists, and climate scientists. He has participated in broad based scientific and technical educational activities relating to water supply, pollution, and nuclear forensics studies in California, the American West, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Central Asia. Dr. Tompson served on the editorial boards of Water Resources Research for 10 years and Advances in Water Resources for 18 years and continues to serve on the editorial board of Computational Geosciences. He received an ScB from Brown University in 1980, a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1985, both in Civil Engineering, and spent two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral associate before moving to Livermore.

  1. Izady, A., O. A. E. Abdalla, A. Joodavi, A. Karimi, M. Chen, and A. Tompson (2017), Groundwater recharge estimation in arid hard rock-alluvium aquifers using combined water-table fluctuation and groundwater balance approaches, Hydrological Processes, 2017: 1–15, DOI: 10.1002/hyp.11270
  2. Birdsell, K., C. Russell, and A. Tompson, technical editors (2018), Case Study Analyses of Radionuclide Transport in Variably Saturated Media at Rainier Mesa, Revision No. 0, June. U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Management Nevada Program, Las Vegas, NV (DOE/NV—1595); 1298 pp
  3. Tompson, A. F. B. (2016), Born from a Flood: The Salton Sea and Its Story of Survival, Journal of Earth Science, Vol. 27, No. 1, p. 089-097, DOI: 10.1007/s12583-016-0630-
  4. Chen, M., A. F. B. Tompson, R. J. Mellors, A. L. Ramirez, K. M. Dyer, X. Yang, and J. L. Wagoner (2014), An efficient Bayesian inversion of a geothermal prospect using a multivariate adaptive regression spline method, Applied Energy, 136 (2014) 619–627
  5. Tompson, A. F. B., D. K. Smith, G. B. Hudson and J. R. Hunt (2006), Analysis of radionuclide migration through a 200-m vadose zone following a 16-year infiltration event, Advances in Water Resources, 29, 281–292
  6. Tompson, A. F. B., C. J. Bruton, G. A. Pawloski, D. K. Smith, W. L. Bourcier, D. E. Shumaker, A. B. Kersting, S. F. Carle, and R. M. Maxwell (2002), On the Evaluation of Groundwater Contamination from Underground Nuclear Tests, Environmental Geology, 42, 235-247
  7. Tompson, A. F. B., and K. J. Jackson (1996), Reactive transport in heterogeneous systems: An overview, Reviews in Mineralogy, 34, 269-310, Mineralogical Society of America
  8. Tompson, A. F. B. (1993), Numerical simulation of chemical migration in physically and chemically heterogeneous porous media, Water Resources Research, 29(11), 3709-3726
  9. Tompson, A. F. B., and L. W. Gelhar (1990), Numerical simulation of solute transport in three-dimensional, randomly heterogeneous porous media, Water Resources Research, 26(10), 2541-2562
  10. Tompson, A. F. B., R. Ababou, and L. W. Gelhar (1989), Implementation of the three-dimensional turning bands random field generator, Water Resources Research, 25(10), 2227-2243
  11. Tompson, A. F. B. (1988), On a new functional form for the dispersive flux in porous media, Water Resources Research, 24(11), 1939-1947

See also my Google Scholar page.

  • Research and Innovations Award in Water Science (co-recipient, publications), The Research Council and Sultan Qaboos Higher Centre for Culture and Science, The Sultanate of Oman, 2019
  • Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award, The Marquis Who’s Who Publications Board, 2017
  • LLNL "Spot" Award for Science on Saturday Presentation, “Hydrology of an ‘Ant Farm,’” Bankhead Theater, Livermore, CA, 2015
  • Distinguished Achievement Award, Extraordinary Programmatic Contribution, Computations Directorate, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 1996
  • Editor's Citation for Excellence in Refereeing, Water Resources Research, 1994
  • Francis Robbin Upton Fellowship, Princeton University, 1982–1984
  • Shell Companies Fellowship, Princeton University, 1980–1981
  • George H. Main Award in Engineering, Brown University, 1980