|
|
|
|
|
Quote of the Day
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds
new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it), but 'That's
funny ...' "
Isaac Asimov
|
|
|
|
|
Dr. Miles A. Sundermeyer
|
|
|
Research Areas:
Vertical and horizontal mixing processes, dye release and Lagrangian drifter studies,
remote and autonomous sensing, numerical modeling of two- and three-dimensional turbulent flows, numerical
modeling of physical and biological interactions.
|
 |
|
Surface dye injection during the Ledwell
et al. GLOBEC dye cruise.
|
Dispersion in the ocean is not solely the
result of molecular processes, but rather is significantly enhanced
by shearing and straining on scales ranging from millimeters to
hundreds of kilometers. The goal of the Ocean Mixing and Stirring
group is to understand the role of such motions in the ocean,
and to quantifiy their effects from the mesoscale down to scales
of a few hundred meters.
The importance of mixing and stirring processes in the ocean
range from their influence on climate to their role in distributing
nutrients and microscopic organisms that are the base of the oceanic
food chain. On basin scales, the distributions of heat and salt are the
fundamental driving forces for the thermohaline circulation. On smaller
scales, dispersion also sets the rate at which nutrients are distributed
from their sources, such as river outflows and upwelling regions.
|
|
|
Lateral dispersion in August 1997 during the Coastal Mixing
& Optics (CMO) program.
|
The broad-reaching implications of dispersion in the ocean have
made it a widely explored field. However, our understanding of the
underlying processes remain limited, partly due to the difficulty of
making observations, and partly because of the complexity of the random
and turbulent processes that are often encountered in oceanic environments.
Two powerful approaches which have made studies of oceanic dispersion
more tractable are Lagrangian drifter- and tracer-release experiments,
and numerical models.
|
|
|
Conceptual model of the adjustment of mixed patches.
|
We use a combination of observations and numerical models to study
mixing and stirring in the ocean on a variety of scales. Specifically,
we use Lagrangian tracers and drifters to measure dispersion in the
field on scales of a few meters to hundreds of kilometers. We further
use numerical models to synthesize the observations and gain insight
into the underlying mechanisms.
|
|
Some recent Ocean Mixing and Stirring projects include:
-
High Resolution Dye Release Experiments using Airborne LIDAR
-
Laboratory Studies of Lateral Dispersion by Small-Scale Geosrophic Motions
-
Numerical Simulations of Vortical Mode Stirring
-
Coastal Mixing and Optics dye release experiments
-
The North Atlantic Tracer Release Experiment
|
|
(Please see side bar for more information on individual projects)
|
|
