RAPID: MRI: Acquisition of an Autonomous Underwater Glider to Investigate Mixing and Dispersion of Oil-gas Mixtures

对深海湍流的观测研究相对较少，据我们所知，还没有发表过关于湍流过程在深海油气混合物或其他污染物羽流扩散中的作用的研究。墨西哥湾漏油事件提供了一个独特的机会，可以利用油气羽流作为独特的标志来研究深水中的混合和分散机制。这些标记是暂时的，最终会逐渐消失，为拟议的现场工作提供了相对较短的机会窗口。请求的RAPID奖励将允许PI？好好利用这个机会。PI申请资金用于购买一架自主水下滑翔机，该滑翔机配备了最先进的科学有效载荷，用于同时测量物理和生物地球化学变量。这种仪器将允许PI捕捉与深海羽流相关的动力学。PI认为，仅仅对生物地球化学测量的定性解释不足以理解像这些羽流这样的复杂系统的动力学，因此需要同时测量物理和生物地球化学变量，以及我们团队的跨学科专业知识来准确地解释和预测动力学。更广泛的影响：预计湍流测量将有助于改进数值弥散模式中亚网格尺度过程的参数化，这对提高其预测技能至关重要。该项目的结果，以及将收集的详细的跨学科数据集，将应用于评估除油气羽流以外的深海水生成分的动态和命运。

Observational studies of turbulence in the deep-sea are relatively scarce, and to the best of our knowledge there are no published studies addressing the role of turbulence processes in the dispersion of oil-gas mixture, or other pollutants, plumes in the deep-sea. The Gulf oil spill provides a unique opportunity to study mixing and dispersion mechanisms in deep waters using oil-gas plumes as a distinctive marker. These markers are temporary and eventually will fade away, providing a relatively short window of opportunity for the proposed field work. The requested RAPID award will allow the PI?s to take advantage of this opportunity.The PI's request funding to acquire an autonomous underwater glider equipped with state-of-the-art scientific payload for simultaneous measurements of physical and biogeochemical variables. This instrumentation will allow the PI's to capture the dynamics associated with deep-sea plumes. The PI's believe that qualitative interpretations of solely biogeochemical measurements are simply insufficient for understanding the dynamics of complex systems such as these plumes, simultaneous measurements of physical and biogeochemical variables, and the interdisciplinary expertise of our team, is thus required to accurately interpret and predict the dynamics.Broader Impacts: The turbulence measurements are expected to help to improve parameterizations of sub-grid scale processes in numerical dispersion models which are crucial for improvement of their predictive skills. Results of this project, and the detailed interdisciplinary datasets that will be collected, will have application in assessment of the dynamics and fate of deep-sea water-borne constituents other than oil-gas plumes.