Acquisition of Instrumentation for Small-scale Process Studies in the Polar Oceans

这项重大研究仪器（MRI）奖提供了一个垂直微结构剖面仪（VMP）的收购，将加强与近表面混合在北方和南极海洋的小和微尺度过程的定量调查。 这些过程包括：混合，其中主要能源是正压潮汐能转化为内潮;与陆架坡折和大陆坡上密度流有关的动力学;双重扩散;与海水状态方程的非线性有关的温压性和成缆作用等过程;以及海洋前缘的侧向侵入。 VMP解决了海洋变化的最小尺度-在几厘米的数量级-这是无法解决与正常可用的船上仪器。 这些高分辨率观测对于计算海洋上层的垂直涡动扩散率，以及评估和学习如何更有效地参数化与速度切变和状态方程过程相关的混合是必不可少的。

This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award provides for the acquisition of a Vertical Microstructure Profiler (VMP) that will enhance the quantitative investigations of small and microscale processes associated with near-surface mixing in the northern and southern polar oceans. Such processes include mixing where the primary energy source is conversion of barotropic tidal energy to internal tides, dynamics associated with density currents over the shelf break and continental slope, double diffusion, processes such as thermobaricity and cabbeling associated with nonlinearities in the seawater equation of state, and lateral intrusions at ocean fronts. The VMP resolves the smallest scales of ocean variability - on the order of the several centimeters - which cannot be resolved with normally available shipboard instrumentation. These high-resolution observations are essential for computing the vertical eddy diffusivity in the upper ocean, and for assessing and learning how to more effectively parameterize the mixing associated with the velocity shear and the equation-of-state processes.