Coastal mixing and transport

了解海洋中的小规模混合是至关重要的。混合通过水柱输送热量、营养物质和污染物，影响气候、生物生产力和沿海生态系统的健康。它还驱动河口环流，沿海上升流，甚至全球翻转环流。尽管在“小尺度”上起作用，但混合影响了所有尺度的海洋环流。这里提出的工作将对小规模现象进行测量，以了解和预测海洋中的混合。我们将把重点放在沿海水域，在那里，新的混合机制仍在被发现，但仍未包括在数值模型中。我们在本提案中确定了四个非常值得关注的领域：-湍流在决定大陆架上物性的循环和运输中的作用；-水如何从表面混合层直接输送到下面的水；关闭骑士入口的潮汐能预算，并了解能量如何产生混合；-了解阿拉斯加湾海达涡流的产生和命运。我们小组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，而大尺度的强迫将用快速波动飞行器进行观测。现代通信使更长的时间尺度监测与剖面浮子和自主滑翔机成为可能，所以我们将利用这些来收集混合的多季节统计数据。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、俄勒冈州立大学和斯克里普斯海洋学研究所的科学家的广泛合作。他们还将为研究生和本科生提供参与前沿海洋学研究的广泛机会。

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.