Coastal mixing and transport

了解海洋中的小规模混合至关重要。 混合通过水柱输送热量，营养物质和污染物，影响气候，生物生产力和我们沿海生态系统的健康。 它还驱动河口环流、海岸上升流，甚至全球翻转环流。 尽管混合作用在“小尺度”上，但在所有尺度上都会影响海洋的环流。 这里提出的工作将对小尺度现象进行测量，以了解和预测海洋中的混合。 我们将集中在沿海沃茨，新的混合机制仍在被发现，仍然没有包括在数值模式。 我们确定了本提案中应集中关注的四个重大专题领域：湍流在确定大陆架上的环流和性质输送方面的作用;沃茨如何从表层混合层输送到正下方的海水;关闭奈特湾的潮汐能量收支，并了解能量如何产生混合;- 了解阿拉斯加湾海达涡旋的产生和命运。 我们的团队将使用独特的仪器来研究这些过程。 小尺度湍流将用微结构仪器进行研究，而大尺度强迫将用快速起伏的飞行器进行观察。 现代通信技术使得更长的时间尺度的监测成为可能，我们将利用这些来收集混合的多季统计数据。 这些项目将涉及与维多利亚大学、海洋科学研究所、华盛顿大学、俄勒冈州州立大学和斯克里普斯海洋学研究所的科学家的广泛合作。 它们还将为研究生和本科生提供广泛的机会，参与前沿的海洋学研究。

It is crucial to understand small-scale mixing in the ocean.  Mixing transports heat, nutrients, and contaminants through the water column, impacting the climate, biological productivity, and the health of our coastal ecosystems.  It also drives estuarine circulation, coastal upwelling, and even the global overturning circulation.  Despite acting on "small scales", mixing impacts the circulation of the ocean at all scales.       The work proposed here will make measurements of small-scale phenomena to understand and predict mixing in the ocean.  We will focus on coastal waters where new mixing mechanisms are still being discovered and still not included in numerical models.  We have identified four areas of great topical interest to concentrate on in this proposal: - the role of turbulence in determining the circulation and transport of properties on continental shelves; - how waters are transported from the surface mixing layer to the water directly beneath; - closing the tidal-energy budget in Knight Inlet, and understanding how the energy produces mixing; - understanding the generation and fate of Haida Eddies in the Gulf of Alaska.       Our group will use unique instrumentation to study these processes.  Small-scale turbulence will be investigated with microstructure instruments, while larger-scale forcing will be observed with a fast undulating vehicle.  Modern communications makes longer time-scale monitoring possible with profiling floats and autonomous gliders, so we will employ these to gather multi-season statistics of mixing.  These projects will involve extensive collaboration with scientists at University of Victoria, Institute of Ocean Sciences, University of Washington, Oregon State University, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.  They will also provide extensive opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students to participate in leading-edge oceanographic studies.