Lagrangian observations of turbulence in breaking surface waves

了解破碎波的动力学是海洋科学中最困难的基本问题之一。这些涡旋和空洞的结构和动力学从来没有在现场得到充分的检查，因为很难以天气学的方式对流动进行采样。PI要求提供资金以开发拉格朗日漂移器，以使用配备微型加速计和陀螺仪、GPS单元、摄像机和压力传感器的漂移器来研究单个波破裂时的时间演变，以重建溢出和下降重力波中的湍流、耗散、气泡夹带和压力的三维分布。这些漂移物将扮演惯性粒子的角色，携带在破碎区。漂移运动将作为破碎机的速度和湍流结构的替代，并将使用频谱分析来将高频数据与单个波浪的大范围衰减联系起来。这些影响的重要性怎么强调都不为过：波浪破碎在海气交换过程中发挥着重要作用，在海洋气溶胶的生产中也发挥着重要作用。

Understanding the dynamics of breaking waves is one of the most difficult fundamental problems in the ocean sciences. Wave breaking produces turbulent flows populated by intense short-lived 3D vortex structures, air cavities and aerated regions. The structure and dynamics of these vortices and cavities have never been fully examined in the field due to the difficulty of sampling the flow in a synoptic way. The PI requests funding to develop Lagrangian drifters to examine the temporal evolution of individual waves as they break using drifters equipped with miniature accelerometers and gyroscopes, GPS units, video camera and pressure sensors, to reconstruct the 3D distribution of turbulence, dissipation, bubble entrainment and pressure in spilling and plunging gravity waves. These drifters will act as inertial particles which will be entrained in the breaking region. The drifter movements will be used as a proxy for the velocity and turbulence structure of the breaker, and spectral analysis will be employed to relate the high-frequency data with the large-scale decay of individual waves. Broader Impacts: The proposed instrumentation has the potential to impact our understanding of the wave breaking process and provide needed observational constraints on model outputs. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of these impacts: wave breaking plays an important role in air-sea exchange processes and a fundamental role in the production of marine aerosols. Training of minority graduate and undergraduate students in an area (Puerto Rico, Caribbean) where such opportunities are relatively scarce. The proposed work will help establish a coastal research effort at the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez. It will entrain students in Puerto Rico into study of the coastal environment, most of whom will be Hispanic.