Ocean mixing

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Canada is bounded on three coasts by the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, making understanding them vital for the country's commerce and well-being. Ocean mixing plays a critical role in controlling the meridional thermohaline overturning circulation (global conveyor belt) which operates on climatological timescales of 1000's of years, nutrient supply to sunlit surface waters, and dispersal of natural and anthropogenic materials dissolved or suspended in seawater. In the stratified open ocean interior, turbulence is largely controlled by breaking of internal gravity waves and appears to be concentrated on ocean boundaries. As well as process-oriented collection and interpretation of field data, public-domain data sets such as WOCE hydrography and ARGO float will be analyzed to assess the role of mixing in the world ocean. My group will continue to study the physics of turbulence production by finescale internal waves and the resulting products, focusing on flow/topography interactions as well as interactions of internal waves with lower-frequency currents. We are also developing dye-release and -tracking abilities in order to follow water, dispersal of contaminants and explore the pathways of water transport and mixing in the ocean with an emphasis on the coastal environment, submarine canyons, the continental slope and shelf.