Can underwater gliders quantify horizontal ocean mixing in the West Antarctic?

量化和理解驱动海洋混合的过程是关闭海洋翻转环流和改善未来气候预测的关键。从历史上看，海洋中的混合测量是使用自由下落剖面仪进行的;然而，在过去五年中，已经开发了新技术以允许使用水下滑翔机测量湍流（Fer等人，2014）。这些平台增加了一个数量级的数量级的测量湍流动能的耗散，和海洋内的温度变化的耗散。虽然这本身提供了非常显着的改进，解决斑块的垂直混合，我们希望了解这些测量是否可以，仔细处理，用于计算水平海洋混合。这是在南极西部估计的一个重要量，因为涡旋对海洋的水平混合和搅动是将海洋热量输送到该地区冰川和冰架的重要过程（Martinson等人，2008; Pritchard等人，2012年）。西南极洲是地球上变暖最快的环境之一，在过去的30年里，陆地和海冰都出现了严重的损失。这项工作将与BAS和南安普顿大学在南大洋混合过程中的现有专业知识紧密结合，最终为NEXUSS CDT提供对这一快速变化地区水平热通量的改进估计。

Quantifying and understanding the processes driving ocean mixing is key to closing the ocean's overturning circulation and improving future climate projections. Historically, mixing measurements in the ocean have been taken using free-falling profilers; however in the last five years new techniques have been developed to allow turbulence to be measured using underwater gliders (Fer et al., 2014). These platforms increase by an order of magnitude the number of measurements both of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy, and the dissipation of temperature variance within the ocean. Whilst this in itself provides very significant improvements in resolving the patchiness of vertical mixing, we wish to understand whether these measurements can, with careful processing, be used to calculate horizontal ocean mixing. This is an important quantity to estimate in the West Antarctic, as horizontal mixing and stirring of the ocean by eddies are important processes for delivering ocean heat to the glaciers and ice shelves in this region (Martinson et al., 2008; Pritchard et al., 2012). The West Antarctic is known to be one of the fastest warming environments on the planet, with significant loss of both land- and sea-ice in the last 30 years. The work will be strongly integrated with existing expertise at BAS and the University of Southampton in Southern Ocean mixing processes, ultimately providing NEXUSS CDT improved estimates of horizontal heat fluxes in this rapidly changing region.