Collaborative Research: NSFGEO-NERC: QUICCHE: Quantifying Interocean fluxes in the Cape Cauldron Hotspot of Eddy kinetic energy

这是一个由国家科学基金会地球科学理事会(NSF/GEO)和英国国家环境研究理事会(UKRI/NERC)通过NSF/GEO-NERC牵头机构协议共同资助的项目。该协定允许美国和英国提交一个单一的联合提案，并由该机构进行同行审查，该机构的调查员在预算中所占比例最大。在成功联合确定奖项后，每个机构将为预算和调查人员的比例提供资金，这些资金与其本身的调查人员和工作的组成部分有关。东南大西洋的开普敦盆地是一个全球涡动动能热点，由亚热带印度洋通过阿古拉斯流泄漏的水提供。通过相互作用的环和涡流，一定比例的温暖和咸的阿古拉斯水被有力地搅拌并混合到更凉爽和更新鲜的大西洋中。该项目将处理这样一种假设，即泄漏到大西洋的大部分印度洋水域是在中尺度(不到大约1公里)由中尺度(数十至数百公里)流场变形产生的次中尺度特征中发现的。该项目将首次观察和描述由角锅内中尺度再循环产生的次中尺度特征。这些观测将被用来估计理论涡旋扩散率和涡旋通量框架下的阿古拉什泄漏通量。结果将与新的和现有的卫星高度计观测相关联，以推断阿古利斯泄漏的可变性。外展和教育活动包括在船上制作两个短片，学生和实习生参观船上，在迈阿密高中亲身体验培养海洋漂流者，以及为学童创作一篇科普文章和一个教育、海洋纸牌游戏。这个项目将需要收集开普敦盆地内的新观测结果，包括细丝和涡流相互作用，以测量相关的亚中尺度特征和估计扩散系数。这些测量将被用来量化涡流热通量和盐通量。将使用欧拉和拉格朗日仪器进行观测，包括系泊、起伏的CTD系统、滑翔机、漂移器、剖面浮标和微结构湍流剖面仪，捕捉从小时到季节和从1到100公里的时间和空间尺度。观测数据将被综合起来，并与其他数据集进行分析，包括来自开普敦盆地SWOT交叉点的测量结果和海洋模型的输出。这些观察结果还将用于在研究区域的样本交叉点评估NASA新的SWOT(地表水和海洋地形)卫星任务。这一奖励反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This is a project that is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate of Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (UKRI/NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-NERC Lead Agency Agreement. This Agreement allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the Agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the budget. Upon successful joint determination of an award, each Agency funds the proportion of the budget and the investigators associated with its own ivestigators and component of the work.The Cape Basin in the southeast Atlantic is a global hotspot of eddy kinetic energy, fed by a leakage of waters from the subtropical Indian Ocean via the Agulhas Current. A proportion of warm and salty Agulhas waters is vigorously stirred and mixed into the cooler and fresher Atlantic by co-interacting rings and eddies. This project will address the hypothesis that a large proportion of the Indian Ocean waters that leak into the Atlantic is to be found in submesoscale (less than approximately 1 km) features generated by deformations of the mesoscale (tens to hundreds of km) flow field. The project will observe and characterize, for the first time, submesoscale features generated by mesoscale recirculations within the Cape Cauldron. The observations will be used to estimate Agulhas leakage fluxes with theoretical eddy diffusivity and eddy flux frameworks. The results will be related to new and existing satellite altimeter observations to infer variability in Agulhas leakage. Outreach and education activities include production of two short films aboard ship, student and intern visits to the ship, hands-on experience building ocean drifters at Miami high schools, and creation of a popular science article and an educational, oceanographic card game for school children.This project will entail the collection of new observations within the Cape Basin of filamentation and eddy interaction to measure the related submesoscale features and estimate diffusivities. These measurements will be used to quantify eddy heat and salt fluxes. Observations will be made using both Eulerian and Lagrangian instrumentation, including moorings, an undulating CTD system, gliders, drifters, profiling floats, and microstructure turbulence profilers, capturing time and space scales from hours to seasons and from 1 to 100 km. The observations will be synthesized and analyzed with other datasets including measurements from the SWOT crossover in the Cape Basin and output from an ocean model. The observations will also be used to evaluate the new NASA SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite mission at a swatch crossover point in the study region.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.