Conference: 2024 Gordon Research Conference on Ocean Mixing: Understanding the Role of Ocean Mixing Across Scales on Climate, Ecosystems, and Ocean Solutions to Societal Problems

这笔赠款将支持2024年关于海洋混合的戈登研究会议(GRC)，以及针对早期职业科学家的戈登研究研讨会(GRS)。这些将提供一个论坛，以提高更广泛的社区对海洋湍流混合的理解，包括跨尺度的相互作用和实际应用。海洋混合在许多与社会相关的领域具有重要影响，包括气候(例如海洋热量和碳吸收、经向翻转环流)、天气(例如飓风强度)、污染(例如海洋塑料)和生态系统(例如缺氧)。最近，由于正在探索海洋在减缓气候和生态系统变化方面的可能作用，还必须考虑海洋可再生能源对混合的变化以及海洋混合对加强海洋二氧化碳清除的影响。2024年GRC将把海洋混合的基础研究与这些重要的影响和应用联系起来。GRC格式旨在引发激烈的讨论，促进新的合作，促进新的理解。GRC将加强海洋混合的基础研究与社会相关问题的应用之间的联系，从而为社会带来好处。GRC还将通过有重点的讨论和促进的非正式网络活动，促进不同方面、使用不同方法和不同职业水平的工作人员之间的新互动，从而培养一个包容的海洋混合社区。GRS将使早期职业科学家充分参与这个社区，为劳动力发展做出贡献。国家科学基金会的支持将有助于消除参与的经济障碍，方法是支持早期职业科学家和来自历史上代表性不足群体的科学家的出席。海洋混合可以大致定义为时间可变的运动，它将示踪剂的通量增加到分子扩散设定的水平以上，包括在大范围内发生的各种过程，从中尺度地转涡到各向同性湍流。在这些尺度之间，许多不同的不稳定过程会激发运动，从而导致混合。除了最大的中尺度涡流外，所有这些过程都发生在太小的尺度上，无法在气候模式的海洋部分明确模拟，需要对它们对示踪剂通量的影响进行参数化，以准确地捕捉它们对大尺度海洋的影响。参数化的发展需要海洋混合不同方面的专家--观测、理论、过程模拟、实验室实验、区域和气候模拟--共同努力。GRC促进了科学家之间的这种合作，他们使用不同的方法，专注于不同的规模，以更好地了解海洋混合。GRS为早期职业科学家提供了一个在主要会议之前与同行建立网络并参与专业发展的论坛。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，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 grant is to support the 2024 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Ocean Mixing, as well as the Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) for early career scientists. These will provide a forum to improve the broader community’s understanding of turbulent mixing in the ocean, including the interactions across scales, and practical applications. Ocean mixing has important impacts in many areas of societal relevance, including climate (e.g. ocean heat and carbon uptake, the meridional overturning circulation), weather (e.g. hurricane intensity), pollution (e.g. marine plastics) and ecosystems (e.g. hypoxia). More recently, as the possible role of the ocean in mitigating climate and ecosystem changes is being explored, changes to mixing resulting from ocean renewable energy and influence of ocean mixing on enhanced ocean carbon dioxide removal must also be considered. The 2024 GRC will make the connection between fundamental studies of ocean mixing and these important impacts and applications. The GRC format is designed to generate vigorous discussion and foster new collaborations, stimulating new understanding. The GRC will strengthen the connection between fundamental studies of ocean mixing and applications to societally relevant problems, with consequent benefits to society. The GRC will also foster an inclusive ocean mixing community by promoting new interactions between people working on different aspects, using different approaches, and at varied career levels, through focused discussions and facilitated informal networking activities. The GRS will enable the full participation of early career scientists in this community, contributing to workforce development. NSF support will help to eliminate financial barriers to participation, by supporting attendance of early career scientists and scientists from historically under-represented groups.Ocean mixing, which can loosely be defined as time-variable motion which increases fluxes of tracers above levels set by molecular diffusion, encompasses a wide variety of processes taking place over a large range of scales, from mesoscale geostrophic eddies to isotropic turbulence. Between these scales many different instability processes excite motions which lead to mixing. All these processes, except for the largest mesoscale eddies, occur on scales too small to explicitly simulate in the ocean component of climate models, requiring parameterizations of their impact on tracer fluxes to accurately capture their effect on the large scale ocean. The development of parameterizations requires experts in different aspects of ocean mixing - observations, theory, process simulation, laboratory experiments, regional and climate modeling - to work together. The GRC stimulates this collaboration between scientists using different approaches and focused on different scales, to better understand ocean mixing. The GRS provides a forum for early career scientists to network with their peers and engage in professional development prior to the main conference.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.