ALBERT

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(11), (2022): 2841–2852, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-22-0025.1.

Description: Prediction of rapid intensification in tropical cyclones prior to landfall is a major societal issue. While air–sea interactions are clearly linked to storm intensity, the connections between the underlying thermal conditions over continental shelves and rapid intensification are limited. Here, an exceptional set of in situ and satellite data are used to identify spatial heterogeneity in sea surface temperatures across the inner core of Hurricane Sally (2020), a storm that rapidly intensified over the shelf. A leftward shift in the region of maximum cooling was observed as the hurricane transited from the open gulf to the shelf. This shift was generated, in part, by the surface heat flux in conjunction with the along- and across-shelf transport of heat from storm-generated coastal circulation. The spatial differences in the sea surface temperatures were large enough to potentially influence rapid intensification processes suggesting that coastal thermal features need to be accounted for to improve storm forecasting as well as to better understand how climate change will modify interactions between tropical cyclones and the coastal ocean.

Description: This research was made possible by the NOAA RESTORE Science Program (NA17NOS4510101 and NA19NOS4510194) and the NASA Physical Oceanography program (80NSSC21K0553 and WBS 281945.02.25.04.67) and NOAA IOOS program via GCOOS (NA16NOS0120018). The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(8), (2022): 1797–1815, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-21-0288.1.

Description: Intruding slope water is a major source of nutrients to sustain the high biological productivity in the Gulf of Maine (GoM). Slope water intrusion into the GoM is affected by Gulf Stream warm-core rings (WCRs) impinging onto the nearby shelf edge. This study combines long-term mooring measurements, satellite remote sensing data, an idealized numerical ocean model, and a linear coastal-trapped wave (CTW) model to examine the impact of WCRs on slope water intrusion into the GoM through the Northeast Channel. Analysis of satellite sea surface height and temperature data shows that the slope sea region off the GoM is a hotspot of ring activities. A significant linear relationship is found between interannual variations of ring activities in the slope sea region off the GoM and bottom salinity at the Northeast Channel, suggesting the importance of WCRs in modulating variability of intruding slope water. Analysis of the mooring data reveals enhanced slope water intrusion through bottom-intensified along-channel flow following impingements of WCRs on the nearby shelf edge. Numerical simulations qualitatively reproduce the observed WCR impingement processes and associated episodic enhancement of slope water intrusion in the Northeast Channel. Diagnosis of the model result indicates that baroclinic CTWs excited by the ring–topography interaction are responsible for the episodically intensified subsurface along-channel inflow, which carries more slope water into the GoM. A WCR that impinges onto the shelf edge to the northeast of the Northeast Channel tends to generate stronger CTWs and cause stronger enhancement of the slope water intrusion into the GoM.

Description: This study is supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-1634965.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 39(10), (2022): 1525–1539, https://doi.org/10.1175/jtech-d-21-0186.1.

Description: The static and dynamic performances of the RBRargo3 are investigated using a combination of laboratory-based and in situ datasets from floats deployed as part of an Argo pilot program. Temperature and pressure measurements compare well to co-located reference data acquired from shipboard CTDs. Static accuracy of salinity measurements is significantly improved using 1) a time lag for temperature, 2) a quadratic pressure dependence, and 3) a unit-based calibration for each RBRargo3 over its full pressure range. Long-term deployments show no significant drift in the RBRargo3 accuracy. The dynamic response of the RBRargo3 demonstrates the presence of two different adjustment time scales: a long-term adjustment O(120) s, driven by the temperature difference between the interior of the conductivity cell and the water, and a short-term adjustment O(5–10) s, associated to the initial exchange of heat between the water and the inner ceramic. Corrections for these effects, including dependence on profiling speed, are developed.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(6), (2022): 1091–1110, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-21-0068.1.

Description: Hundreds of full-depth temperature and salinity profiles collected by Deepglider autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in the North Atlantic reveal robust signals in eddy isopycnal vertical displacement and horizontal current throughout the entire water column. In separate glider missions southeast of Bermuda, subsurface-intensified cold, fresh coherent vortices were observed with velocities exceeding 20 cm s−1 at depths greater than 1000 m. With vertical resolution on the order of 20 m or less, these full-depth glider slant profiles newly permit estimation of scaled vertical wavenumber spectra from the barotropic through the 40th baroclinic mode. Geostrophic turbulence theory predictions of spectral slopes associated with the forward enstrophy cascade and proportional to inverse wavenumber cubed generally agree with glider-derived quasi-universal spectra of potential and kinetic energy found at a variety of locations distinguished by a wide range of mean surface eddy kinetic energy. Water-column average spectral estimates merge at high vertical mode number to established descriptions of internal wave spectra. Among glider mission sites, geographic and seasonal variability implicate bottom drag as a mechanism for dissipation, but also the need for more persistent sampling of the deep ocean.

Description: This work was funded by NSF Grant 1736217 and would not have been possible without the help of Kirk O’Donnell, James Bennett, Noel Pelland, and all contributors to Deepglider development. We additionally thank the captain crew of the R/V Atlantic Explorer and the BATS team at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, particularly Rod Johnson, as well as Seakeepers International for their professionalism, capability, and generous assistance in deploying and recovering gliders.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(10), (2022): 2325–2341, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0015.1.

Description: The ocean surface boundary layer is a gateway of energy transfer into the ocean. Wind-driven shear and meteorologically forced convection inject turbulent kinetic energy into the surface boundary layer, mixing the upper ocean and transforming its density structure. In the absence of direct observations or the capability to resolve subgrid-scale 3D turbulence in operational ocean models, the oceanography community relies on surface boundary layer similarity scalings (BLS) of shear and convective turbulence to represent this mixing. Despite their importance, near-surface mixing processes (and ubiquitous BLS representations of these processes) have been undersampled in high-energy forcing regimes such as the Southern Ocean. With the maturing of autonomous sampling platforms, there is now an opportunity to collect high-resolution spatial and temporal measurements in the full range of forcing conditions. Here, we characterize near-surface turbulence under strong wind forcing using the first long-duration glider microstructure survey of the Southern Ocean. We leverage these data to show that the measured turbulence is significantly higher than standard shear-convective BLS in the shallower parts of the surface boundary layer and lower than standard shear-convective BLS in the deeper parts of the surface boundary layer; the latter of which is not easily explained by present wave-effect literature. Consistent with the CBLAST (Coupled Boundary Layers and Air Sea Transfer) low winds experiment, this bias has the largest magnitude and spread in the shallowest 10% of the actively mixing layer under low-wind and breaking wave conditions, when relatively low levels of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) in surface regime are easily biased by wave events.

Description: This paper is VIMS Contribution 4103. Computational resources were provided by the VIMS Ocean-Atmosphere and Climate Change Research Fund. AUSSOM was supported by the OCE Division of the National Science Foundation (1558639).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 102(10), (2021): E1936–E1951, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-20-0113.1.

Description: In the Bay of Bengal, the warm, dry boreal spring concludes with the onset of the summer monsoon and accompanying southwesterly winds, heavy rains, and variable air–sea fluxes. Here, we summarize the 2018 monsoon onset using observations collected through the multinational Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillations in the Bay of Bengal (MISO-BoB) program between the United States, India, and Sri Lanka. MISO-BoB aims to improve understanding of monsoon intraseasonal variability, and the 2018 field effort captured the coupled air–sea response during a transition from active-to-break conditions in the central BoB. The active phase of the ∼20-day research cruise was characterized by warm sea surface temperature (SST 〉 30°C), cold atmospheric outflows with intermittent heavy rainfall, and increasing winds (from 2 to 15 m s−1). Accumulated rainfall exceeded 200 mm with 90% of precipitation occurring during the first week. The following break period was both dry and clear, with persistent 10–12 m s−1 wind and evaporation of 0.2 mm h−1. The evolving environmental state included a deepening ocean mixed layer (from ∼20 to 50 m), cooling SST (by ∼1°C), and warming/drying of the lower to midtroposphere. Local atmospheric development was consistent with phasing of the large-scale intraseasonal oscillation. The upper ocean stores significant heat in the BoB, enough to maintain SST above 29°C despite cooling by surface fluxes and ocean mixing. Comparison with reanalysis indicates biases in air–sea fluxes, which may be related to overly cool prescribed SST. Resolution of such biases offers a path toward improved forecasting of transition periods in the monsoon.

Description: This work was supported through the U.S. Office of Naval Research’s Departmental Research Initiative: Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillations in the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ministry of Earth Science’s Ocean Mixing and Monsoons Program, and the Sri Lankan National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency. We thank the Captain and crew of the R/V Thompson for their help in data collection. Surface atmospheric fields included fluxes were quality controlled and processed by the Boundary Layer Observations and Processes Team within the NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Forecast analysis was completed by India Meteorological Department. Drone image was taken by Shreyas Kamat with annotations by Gualtiero Spiro Jaeger. We also recognize the numerous researchers who supported cruise- and land-based measurements. This work represents Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory contribution number 8503, and PMEL contribution number 5193.

Description: 2022-04-01

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society , 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Han, L., Seim, H., Bane, J., Todd, R. E., & Muglia, M. A shelf water cascading event near Cape Hatteras. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 51(6), (2021): 2021–2033, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0156.1.

Description: Carbon-rich Middle Atlantic Bight (MAB) and South Atlantic Bight (SAB) shelf waters typically converge on the continental shelf near Cape Hatteras. Both are often exported to the adjacent open ocean in this region. During a survey of the region in mid-January 2018, there was no sign of shelf water export at the surface. Instead, a subsurface layer of shelf water with high chlorophyll and dissolved oxygen was observed at the edge of the Gulf Stream east of Cape Hatteras. Strong cooling over the MAB and SAB shelves in early January led to shelf waters being denser than offshore surface waters. Driven by the density gradient, the denser shelf waters cascaded beneath the Gulf Stream and were subsequently entrained into the Gulf Stream, as they were advected northeastward. Underwater glider observations 80 km downstream of the export location captured 0.44 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) of shelf waters transported along the edge of the Gulf Stream in January 2018. In total, as much as 7 × 106 kg of carbon was exported from the continental shelf to a greater depth in the open ocean during this 5-day-long cascading event. Earlier observations of near-bottom temperature and salinity at a depth of 230 m captured several multiday episodes of shelf water at a location that was otherwise dominated by Gulf Stream water, indicating that the January 2018 cascading event was not unique. Cascading is an important, yet little-studied pathway of carbon export and sequestration at Cape Hatteras.

Description: This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (Grants OCE-1558920 to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and OCE-1558521 to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) as part of PEACH. We acknowledge and thank Sara Haines for the processing and QC of the mooring data, and we thank the PEACH group for helpful discussions and for their support. Additional thanks are given to the crew of R/V Armstrong (AR-26).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 39(2), (2022): 271–282. https://doi.org/10.1175/jtech-d-21-0069.1.

Description: The inception of a moored buoy network in the northern Indian Ocean in 1997 paved the way for systematic collection of long-term time series observations of meteorological and oceanographic parameters. This buoy network was revamped in 2011 with Ocean Moored buoy Network for north Indian Ocean (OMNI) buoys fitted with additional sensors to better quantify the air–sea fluxes. An intercomparison of OMNI buoy measurements with the nearby Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) mooring during the year 2015 revealed an overestimation of downwelling longwave radiation (LWR↓). Analysis of the OMNI and WHOI radiation sensors at a test station at National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) during 2019 revealed that the accurate and stable amplification of the thermopile voltage records along with the customized datalogger in the WHOI system results in better estimations of LWR↓. The offset in NIOT measured LWR↓ is estimated first by segregating the LWR↓ during clear-sky conditions identified using the downwelling shortwave radiation measurements from the same test station, and second, finding the offset by taking the difference with expected theoretical clear-sky LWR↓. The corrected LWR↓ exhibited good agreement with that of collocated WHOI measurements, with a correlation of 0.93. This method is applied to the OMNI field measurements and again compared with the nearby WHOI mooring measurements, exhibiting a better correlation of 0.95. This work has led to the revamping of radiation measurements in OMNI buoys and provides a reliable method to correct past measurements and improve estimation of air–sea fluxes in the Indian Ocean.

Description: KJJ and RV thank Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), Government of India, Secretary, MoES, and Director, NIOT, for the support and encouragement in carrying out the work under the National Monsoon Mission, Ocean Mixing and Monsoon (OMM) program. AT, JTF, and RAW thank Office of Naval Research Grants N00014-19-12410 and N00014-17-12880, United States, for funding and support. The OOS team at NIOT is acknowledged for their efforts in maintaining the OMNI buoy network in North Indian Ocean. We acknowledge Dr. B.W. Blomquist, University of Colorado, for his support in computing clear-sky radiation and Iury T. Simoes-Sousa, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, for the graphics. NCMRWF, MoES, Government of India, is acknowledged for NGFS reanalysis dataset, which is produced under the collaboration between NCMRWF, IITM, and IMD.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Climate 35(2), (2022): 851–875, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0603.1.

Description: The Earth system is accumulating energy due to human-induced activities. More than 90% of this energy has been stored in the ocean as heat since 1970, with ∼60% of that in the upper 700 m. Differences in upper-ocean heat content anomaly (OHCA) estimates, however, exist. Here, we use a dataset protocol for 1970–2008—with six instrumental bias adjustments applied to expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data, and mapped by six research groups—to evaluate the spatiotemporal spread in upper OHCA estimates arising from two choices: 1) those arising from instrumental bias adjustments and 2) those arising from mathematical (i.e., mapping) techniques to interpolate and extrapolate data in space and time. We also examined the effect of a common ocean mask, which reveals that exclusion of shallow seas can reduce global OHCA estimates up to 13%. Spread due to mapping method is largest in the Indian Ocean and in the eddy-rich and frontal regions of all basins. Spread due to XBT bias adjustment is largest in the Pacific Ocean within 30°N–30°S. In both mapping and XBT cases, spread is higher for 1990–2004. Statistically different trends among mapping methods are found not only in the poorly observed Southern Ocean but also in the well-observed northwest Atlantic. Our results cannot determine the best mapping or bias adjustment schemes, but they identify where important sensitivities exist, and thus where further understanding will help to refine OHCA estimates. These results highlight the need for further coordinated OHCA studies to evaluate the performance of existing mapping methods along with comprehensive assessment of uncertainty estimates.

Description: AS is supported by a Tasmanian Graduate Research Scholarship, a CSIRO-UTAS Quantitative Marine Science top-up, and by the Australian Research Council (ARC) (CE170100023; DP160103130). CMD was partially supported by ARC (FT130101532) and the Natural Environmental Research Council (NE/P019293/1). RC was supported through funding from the Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub of the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program. TB is supported by the Climate Observation and Monitoring Program, National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, U.S. Department of commerce. GCJ and JML are supported by NOAA Research and the NOAA Ocean Climate Observation Program. This is PMEL contribution number 5065. JAC is supported by the Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research (CSHOR), jointly funded by the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (QNLM, China) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO, Australia) and Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project funding scheme (project DP190101173). The research was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). Data used in this study are available on request.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(1),(2022): 75–97, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-21-0099.1.

Description: Mesoscale eddies contain the bulk of the ocean’s kinetic energy (KE), but fundamental questions remain on the cross-scale KE transfers linking eddy generation and dissipation. The role of submesoscale flows represents the key point of discussion, with contrasting views of submesoscales as either a source or a sink of mesoscale KE. Here, the first observational assessment of the annual cycle of the KE transfer between mesoscale and submesoscale motions is performed in the upper layers of a typical open-ocean region. Although these diagnostics have marginal statistical significance and should be regarded cautiously, they are physically plausible and can provide a valuable benchmark for model evaluation. The cross-scale KE transfer exhibits two distinct stages, whereby submesoscales energize mesoscales in winter and drain mesoscales in spring. Despite this seasonal reversal, an inverse KE cascade operates throughout the year across much of the mesoscale range. Our results are not incompatible with recent modeling investigations that place the headwaters of the inverse KE cascade at the submesoscale, and that rationalize the seasonality of mesoscale KE as an inverse cascade-mediated response to the generation of submesoscales in winter. However, our findings may challenge those investigations by suggesting that, in spring, a downscale KE transfer could dampen the inverse KE cascade. An exploratory appraisal of the dynamics governing mesoscale–submesoscale KE exchanges suggests that the upscale KE transfer in winter is underpinned by mixed layer baroclinic instabilities, and that the downscale KE transfer in spring is associated with frontogenesis. Current submesoscale-permitting ocean models may substantially understate this downscale KE transfer, due to the models’ muted representation of frontogenesis.

Description: The OSMOSIS experiment was funded by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through Grants NE/1019999/1 and NE/101993X/1. ACNG acknowledges the support of the Royal Society and the Wolfson Foundation, and XY that of a China Scholarship Council PhD studentship.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(8), (2022): 1677-1691, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0269.1.

Description: Oceanic mesoscale motions including eddies, meanders, fronts, and filaments comprise a dominant fraction of oceanic kinetic energy and contribute to the redistribution of tracers in the ocean such as heat, salt, and nutrients. This reservoir of mesoscale energy is regulated by the conversion of potential energy and transfers of kinetic energy across spatial scales. Whether and under what circumstances mesoscale turbulence precipitates forward or inverse cascades, and the rates of these cascades, remain difficult to directly observe and quantify despite their impacts on physical and biological processes. Here we use global observations to investigate the seasonality of surface kinetic energy and upper-ocean potential energy. We apply spatial filters to along-track satellite measurements of sea surface height to diagnose surface eddy kinetic energy across 60–300-km scales. A geographic and scale-dependent seasonal cycle appears throughout much of the midlatitudes, with eddy kinetic energy at scales less than 60 km peaking 1–4 months before that at 60–300-km scales. Spatial patterns in this lag align with geographic regions where an Argo-derived estimate of the conversion of potential to kinetic energy is seasonally varying. In midlatitudes, the conversion rate peaks 0–2 months prior to kinetic energy at scales less than 60 km. The consistent geographic patterns between the seasonality of potential energy conversion and kinetic energy across spatial scale provide observational evidence for the inverse cascade and demonstrate that some component of it is seasonally modulated. Implications for mesoscale parameterizations and numerical modeling are discussed.

Description: This work was generously funded by NSF Grants OCE-1912302, OCE-1912125 (Drushka), and OCE-1912325 (Abernathey) as part of the Ocean Energy and Eddy Transport Climate Process Team.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 38(9), (2021): 1535–1550, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-20-0176.s1.

Description: Monitoring the heat content variability of glacial fjords is crucial to understanding the effects of oceanic forcing on marine-terminating glaciers. A pressure-sensor-equipped inverted echo sounder (PIES) was deployed midfjord in Sermilik Fjord in southeast Greenland from August 2011 to September 2012 alongside a moored array of instruments recording temperature, conductivity, and velocity. Historical hydrography is used to quantify the relationship between acoustic travel time and the vertically averaged heat content, and a new method is developed for filtering acoustic return echoes in an ice-influenced environment. We show that PIES measurements, combined with a knowledge of the fjord’s two-layer density structure, can be used to reconstruct the thickness and temperature of the inflowing water. Additionally, we find that fjord–shelf exchange events are identifiable in the travel time record implying the PIES can be used to monitor fjord circulation. Finally, we show that PIES data can be combined with moored temperature records to derive the heat content of the upper layer of the fjord where moored instruments are at great risk of being damaged by transiting icebergs.

Description: FS and MA acknowledge funding from the Kerr Family Foundation and the Grossman Family Foundation through the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. MA is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (1332911). FS and RS acknowledge support from NSF OCE-1657601 and from the Heising-Simons Foundation.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society , 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Zippel, S. F., Farrar, J. T., Zappa, C. J., Miller, U., St Laurent, L., Ijichi, T., Weller, R. A., McRaven, L., Nylund, S., & Le Bel, D. Moored turbulence measurements using pulse-coherent doppler sonar. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 38(9), (2021): 1621–1639, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-21-0005.1.

Description: Upper-ocean turbulence is central to the exchanges of heat, momentum, and gases across the air–sea interface and therefore plays a large role in weather and climate. Current understanding of upper-ocean mixing is lacking, often leading models to misrepresent mixed layer depths and sea surface temperature. In part, progress has been limited by the difficulty of measuring turbulence from fixed moorings that can simultaneously measure surface fluxes and upper-ocean stratification over long time periods. Here we introduce a direct wavenumber method for measuring turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation rates ϵ from long-enduring moorings using pulse-coherent ADCPs. We discuss optimal programming of the ADCPs, a robust mechanical design for use on a mooring to maximize data return, and data processing techniques including phase-ambiguity unwrapping, spectral analysis, and a correction for instrument response. The method was used in the Salinity Processes Upper-Ocean Regional Study (SPURS) to collect two year-long datasets. We find that the mooring-derived TKE dissipation rates compare favorably to estimates made nearby from a microstructure shear probe mounted to a glider during its two separate 2-week missions for O(10−8) ≤ ϵ ≤ O(10−5) m2 s−3. Periods of disagreement between turbulence estimates from the two platforms coincide with differences in vertical temperature profiles, which may indicate that barrier layers can substantially modulate upper-ocean turbulence over horizontal scales of 1–10 km. We also find that dissipation estimates from two different moorings at 12.5 and at 7 m are in agreement with the surface buoyancy flux during periods of strong nighttime convection, consistent with classic boundary layer theory.

Description: This work was funded by NASA as part of the Salinity Processes in the Upper Ocean Regional Study (SPURS), supporting field work for SPURS-1 (NASA Grant NNX11AE84G), for SPURS-2 (NASA Grant NNX15AG20G), and for analysis (NASA Grant 80NSSC18K1494). Funding for early iterations of this project associated with the VOCALS project and Stratus 9 mooring was provided by NSF (Awards 0745508 and 0745442). Additional funding was provided by ONR Grant N000141812431 and NSF Award 1756839. The Stratus Ocean Reference Station is funded by the Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (CPO FundRef Number 100007298), through the Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region (CINAR) under Cooperative Agreement NA14OAR4320158. Microstructure measurements made from the glider were supported by NSF (Award 1129646).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(3), (2022): 363–382, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0084.1.

Description: Meltwater from Greenland is an important freshwater source for the North Atlantic Ocean, released into the ocean at the head of fjords in the form of runoff, submarine melt, and icebergs. The meltwater release gives rise to complex in-fjord transformations that result in its dilution through mixing with other water masses. The transformed waters, which contain the meltwater, are exported from the fjords as a new water mass Glacially Modified Water (GMW). Here we use summer hydrographic data collected from 2013 to 2019 in Upernavik, a major glacial fjord in northwest Greenland, to describe the water masses that flow into the fjord from the shelf and the exported GMWs. Using an optimum multi-parameter technique across multiple years we then show that GMW is composed of 57.8% ± 8.1% Atlantic Water (AW), 41.0% ± 8.3% Polar Water (PW), 1.0% ± 0.1% subglacial discharge, and 0.2% ± 0.2% submarine meltwater. We show that the GMW fractional composition cannot be described by buoyant plume theory alone since it includes lateral mixing within the upper layers of the fjord not accounted for by buoyant plume dynamics. Consistent with its composition, we find that changes in GMW properties reflect changes in the AW and PW source waters. Using the obtained dilution ratios, this study suggests that the exchange across the fjord mouth during summer is on the order of 50 mSv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) (compared to a freshwater input of 0.5 mSv). This study provides a first-order parameterization for the exchange at the mouth of glacial fjords for large-scale ocean models.

Description: This work was partially supported by the Centre for Climate Dynamics (SKD) at the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research. The authors thank NASA and the OMG consortium for making observational data freely available, and acknowledge M. Morlighem for good support in the early stages of this project. MM and LHS and would also like to thank Ø. Paasche, the ACER project, and the U.S. Norway Fulbright Foundation for the Norwegian Arctic Chair Grant 2019–20 that made the visit to Scripps Institution of Oceanography possible. FS acknowledges support from the DOE Office of Science Grant DE-SC0020073, Heising-Simons Foundation and from NSF and OCE-1756272. DAS acknowledges support from U.K. NERC Grants NE/P011365/1, NE/T011920/1, and NERC Independent Research Fellowship NE/T011920/1. MW was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, administered by the Universities Space Research Association under contract with NASA. CSA would like to acknowledge Geocenter Denmark for support to the project “Upernavik Glacier.”

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 51(9), (2021): 2721–2733, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0298.1.

Description: A linear numerical model of an island or a tall seamount is used to explore superinertial leaky resonances forced by ambient vertically and horizontally uniform current fluctuations. The model assumes a circularly symmetric topography (including a shallow reef) and allows realistic stratification and bottom friction. As long as there is substantial stratification, a number of leaky resonances are found, and when the island’s flanks are narrow relative to the internal Rossby radius, some of the near-resonant modes resemble leaky internal Kelvin waves. Other “resonances” resemble higher radial mode long gravity waves as explored by Chambers. The near-resonances amplify the cross-reef velocities that help fuel biological activity. Results for cases with the central island replaced by a lagoon do not differ greatly from the island case which has land at the center. As an aside, insight is provided on the question of offshore boundary conditions for superinertial nearly trapped waves along a straight coast.

Description: © The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Fine, E., MacKinnon, J., Alford, M., Middleton, L., Taylor, J., Mickett, J., Cole, S., Couto, N., Boyer, A., & Peacock, T. Double diffusion, shear instabilities, and heat impacts of a pacific summer water intrusion in the Beaufort Sea. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 52(2), (2022): 189–203, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0074.1.

Description: Pacific Summer Water eddies and intrusions transport heat and salt from boundary regions into the western Arctic basin. Here we examine concurrent effects of lateral stirring and vertical mixing using microstructure data collected within a Pacific Summer Water intrusion with a length scale of ∼20 km. This intrusion was characterized by complex thermohaline structure in which warm Pacific Summer Water interleaved in alternating layers of O(1) m thickness with cooler water, due to lateral stirring and intrusive processes. Along interfaces between warm/salty and cold/freshwater masses, the density ratio was favorable to double-diffusive processes. The rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy (ε) was elevated along the interleaving surfaces, with values up to 3 × 10−8 W kg−1 compared to background ε of less than 10−9 W kg−1. Based on the distribution of ε as a function of density ratio Rρ, we conclude that double-diffusive convection is largely responsible for the elevated ε observed over the survey. The lateral processes that created the layered thermohaline structure resulted in vertical thermohaline gradients susceptible to double-diffusive convection, resulting in upward vertical heat fluxes. Bulk vertical heat fluxes above the intrusion are estimated in the range of 0.2–1 W m−2, with the localized flux above the uppermost warm layer elevated to 2–10 W m−2. Lateral fluxes are much larger, estimated between 1000 and 5000 W m−2, and set an overall decay rate for the intrusion of 1–5 years.

Description: This work was supported by ONR Grant N00014-16-1-2378 and NSF Grants PLR 14-56705 and PLR-1303791, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Grant DGE-1650112, as well as by the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, with funding provided by the Weston Howland Jr. Postdoctoral Scholarship.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 39(5), (2022): 595–617, https://doi.org/10.1175/jtech-d-21-0039.1.

Description: The future Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission aims to map sea surface height (SSH) in wide swaths with an unprecedented spatial resolution and subcentimeter accuracy. The instrument performance needs to be verified using independent measurements in a process known as calibration and validation (Cal/Val). The SWOT Cal/Val needs in situ measurements that can make synoptic observations of SSH field over an O(100) km distance with an accuracy matching the SWOT requirements specified in terms of the along-track wavenumber spectrum of SSH error. No existing in situ observing system has been demonstrated to meet this challenge. A field campaign was conducted during September 2019–January 2020 to assess the potential of various instruments and platforms to meet the SWOT Cal/Val requirement. These instruments include two GPS buoys, two bottom pressure recorders (BPR), three moorings with fixed conductivity–temperature–depth (CTD) and CTD profilers, and a glider. The observations demonstrated that 1) the SSH (hydrostatic) equation can be closed with 1–3 cm RMS residual using BPR, CTD mooring and GPS SSH, and 2) using the upper-ocean steric height derived from CTD moorings enable subcentimeter accuracy in the California Current region during the 2019/20 winter. Given that the three moorings are separated at 10–20–30 km distance, the observations provide valuable information about the small-scale SSH variability associated with the ocean circulation at frequencies ranging from hourly to monthly in the region. The combined analysis sheds light on the design of the SWOT mission postlaunch Cal/Val field campaign.

Description: The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). All authors are supported by the SWOT project. J. T. Farrar was partially supported by NASA NNX16AH76G.

Description: 2022-11-01

Description: As described in the methods section of “Direct Observation of Wave-coherent Pressure Work in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer”: Measurements were made from an open-lattice steel tower deployed in roughly 13 m water depth in Buzzards Bay, MA. Buzzards Bay is a 48 km by 12 km basin open on the SW side to Rhode Island Sound. The average depth is 11 m, with a tide range of 1 to 1.5 m, depending on the neap/spring cycles. Winds in Buzzards Bay are frequently aligned on the long-axis (from the NE or SW), and are commonly strong, particularly in the fall and winter. The tower was deployed near the center of the bay at 41.577638 N, 70.745555 W for a spring deployment lasting from April 12, 2022 to June 13th, 2022. Atmospheric measurements included three primary instrument booms that housed paired sonic anemometers (RM Young 81000RE) and high-resolution pressure sensors (Paros Scientific). The pressure sensor intakes were terminated with static pressure heads, which reduce the dynamic pressure contribution to the measured (static) pressure. The tower booms were aligned at 280 degrees such that the NE and SW winds would be unobstructed by the tower's main body. A fourth sonic anemometer (Gill R3) was extended above the tower such that it was open to all wind directions and clear of wake by the tower structure. A single point lidar (Riegl LD90-3i) was mounted to the highest boom, such that the lidar measured the water surface elevation underneath the anemometer and pressure sensors to within a few centimeters horizontally. All instruments were time synchronized with a custom "miniNode" flux logger, that aggregated the data streams from each instrument. Additional atmospheric and wave measurements on the tower included short-wave and long-wave radiometers (Kipp & Zonen), two RH/T sensors (Vaisala), and a standard lower-resolution barometer (Setra).

Description: National Science Foundation, Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE) Award 2023020

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2022. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 52(8), (2022): 1927-1943, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0124.1.

Description: The Galápagos Archipelago lies on the equator in the path of the eastward flowing Pacific Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC). When the EUC reaches the archipelago, it upwells and bifurcates into a north and south branch around the archipelago at a latitude determined by topography. Since the Coriolis parameter (f) equals zero at the equator, strong velocity gradients associated with the EUC can result in Ertel potential vorticity (Q) having sign opposite that of planetary vorticity near the equator. Observations collected by underwater gliders deployed just west of the Galápagos Archipelago during 2013–16 are used to estimate Q and to diagnose associated instabilities that may impact the Galápagos Cold Pool. Estimates of Q are qualitatively conserved along streamlines, consistent with the 2.5-layer, inertial model of the EUC by Pedlosky. The Q with sign opposite of f is advected south of the Galápagos Archipelago when the EUC core is located south of the bifurcation latitude. The horizontal gradient of Q suggests that the region between 2°S and 2°N above 100 m is barotropically unstable, while limited regions are baroclinically unstable. Conditions conducive to symmetric instability are observed between the EUC core and the equator and within the southern branch of the undercurrent. Using 2-month and 3-yr averages, e-folding time scales are 2–11 days, suggesting that symmetric instability can persist on those time scales.

Description: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grants OCE-1232971 and OCE-1233282), the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program (Grant 80NSSC17K0443), and the Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NA13OAR4830216). Color maps are from Thyng et al. (2016).

Description: 2023-02-01

Description: Leg 6 of CHAIN Cruise 115 began in Rio de Janeiro on 22 April 1974, and terminated in Recife on 18 May 1974. A multi-disciplinary scientific program was carried out within the Vema Channel and on the northern flanks of the Rio Grande Rise (see Figure 1). Personnel and scientific programs representing several institutions (W.H.O.I., Scripps, Lamont-Doherty) were included in the project; Brazilian observers representing PETROBRAS and the National Research Council also participated in the program.

Description: Prepared for the National Science Foundation under Grant GA-41186. Financial support for shipboard operations and most of the scientific programs during Leg 6 of CHAIN Cruise 115 was provided under National Science Foundation grant GA-41185. Seismic profiling and bathymetry were supported under O.N.R. Contract N00014-66-C-0241. Bottom current measurements received support under N.S.F. Grant No. GA-41285 to W. Patzert and to J.L. Reid (Scripps). Support for the Lamont-Doherty nephelometer program was provided under O.N.R. Contract N00014-67-A-0108-0004 and N.S.F. Grant GA-27281. Supplementary equipment items required for the transponder navigation system were provided by the Woods Hole Ocean Industry Program.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(10), (2020): 2849-2871, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0086.1.

Description: The structure, transport, and seasonal variability of the West Greenland boundary current system near Cape Farewell are investigated using a high-resolution mooring array deployed from 2014 to 2018. The boundary current system is comprised of three components: the West Greenland Coastal Current, which advects cold and fresh Upper Polar Water (UPW); the West Greenland Current, which transports warm and salty Irminger Water (IW) along the upper slope and UPW at the surface; and the Deep Western Boundary Current, which advects dense overflow waters. Labrador Sea Water (LSW) is prevalent at the seaward side of the array within an offshore recirculation gyre and at the base of the West Greenland Current. The 4-yr mean transport of the full boundary current system is 31.1 ± 7.4 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1), with no clear seasonal signal. However, the individual water mass components exhibit seasonal cycles in hydrographic properties and transport. LSW penetrates the boundary current locally, through entrainment/mixing from the adjacent recirculation gyre, and also enters the current upstream in the Irminger Sea. IW is modified through air–sea interaction during winter along the length of its trajectory around the Irminger Sea, which converts some of the water to LSW. This, together with the seasonal increase in LSW entering the current, results in an anticorrelation in transport between these two water masses. The seasonality in UPW transport can be explained by remote wind forcing and subsequent adjustment via coastal trapped waves. Our results provide the first quantitatively robust observational description of the boundary current in the eastern Labrador Sea.

Description: A.P., R.S.P., F.B., D.J.T., and A.L.R. were funded by Grants OCE-1259618 and OCE-1756361 from the National Science Foundation. I.L.B, F.S., and J.H. were supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1258823 and OCE-1756272. Mooring data from MA2 was funded by the European Union 7th Framework Programme (FP7 2007-2013) under Grant 308299 (NACLIM) and the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant 727852 (Blue-Action). J.K. and M.O. acknowledge EU Horizon 2020 funding Grants 727852 (Blue-action) and 862626 (EuroSea) and from the German Ministry of Research and Education (RACE Program). G.W.K.M. acknowledges funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 51(1), (2021): 19-35, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-19-0233.1.

Description: In the Beaufort Sea in September of 2015, concurrent mooring and microstructure observations were used to assess dissipation rates in the vicinity of 72°35′N, 145°1′W. Microstructure measurements from a free-falling profiler survey showed very low [O(10−10) W kg−1] turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rates ε. A finescale parameterization based on both shear and strain measurements was applied to estimate the ratio of shear to strain Rω and ε at the mooring location, and a strain-based parameterization was applied to the microstructure survey (which occurred approximately 100 km away from the mooring site) for direct comparison with microstructure results. The finescale parameterization worked well, with discrepancies ranging from a factor of 1–2.5 depending on depth. The largest discrepancies occurred at depths with high shear. Mean Rω was 17, and Rω showed high variability with values ranging from 3 to 50 over 8 days. Observed ε was slightly elevated (factor of 2–3 compared with a later survey of 11 profiles taken over 3 h) from 25 to 125 m following a wind event which occurred at the beginning of the mooring deployment, reaching a maximum of ε= 6 × 10−10 W kg−1 at 30-m depth. Velocity signals associated with near-inertial waves (NIWs) were observed at depths greater than 200 m, where the Atlantic Water mass represents a reservoir of oceanic heat. However, no evidence of elevated ε or heat fluxes was observed in association with NIWs at these depths in either the microstructure survey or the finescale parameterization estimates.

Description: This work was supported by NSF Grants PLR 14-56705 and PLR-1303791 and by NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Grant DGE-1650112.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 51(1),(2021): 3-17, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0064.1.

Description: The strong El Niño of 2014–16 was observed west of the Galápagos Islands through sustained deployment of underwater gliders. Three years of observations began in October 2013 and ended in October 2016, with observations at longitudes 93° and 95°W between latitudes 2°N and 2°S. In total, there were over 3000 glider-days of data, covering over 50 000 km with over 12 000 profiles. Coverage was superior closer to the Galápagos on 93°W, where gliders were equipped with sensors to measure velocity as well as temperature, salinity, and pressure. The repeated glider transects are analyzed to produce highly resolved mean sections and maps of observed variables as functions of time, latitude, and depth. The mean sections reveal the structure of the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC), the South Equatorial Current, and the equatorial front. The mean fields are used to calculate potential vorticity Q and Richardson number Ri. Gradients in the mean are strong enough to make the sign of Q opposite to that of planetary vorticity and to have Ri near unity, suggestive of mixing. Temporal variability is dominated by the 2014–16 El Niño, with the arrival of depressed isopycnals documented in 2014 and 2015. Increases in eastward velocity advect anomalously salty water and are uncorrelated with warm temperatures and deep isopycnals. Thus, vertical advection is important to changes in heat, and horizontal advection is relevant to changes in salt. Implications of this work include possibilities for future research, model assessment and improvement, and sustained observations across the equatorial Pacific.

Description: We gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation (OCE-1232971, OCE-1233282) and the Ocean Observing and Monitoring Division of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NA13OAR4830216).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2021. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 38(1), (2021): 3-16, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-20-0110.1.

Description: Airborne expendable bathythermographs (AXBTs) are air-launched, single-use temperature–depth probes that telemeter temperature observations as VHF-modulated frequencies. This study describes the AXBT Real-Time Editing System (ARES), which is composed of two components: the ARES Data Acquisition System, which receives telemetered temperature–depth profiles with no external hardware other than a VHF radio receiver, and the ARES Profile Editing System, which quality controls AXBT temperature–depth profiles. The ARES Data Acquisition System performs fast Fourier transforms on windowed segments of the demodulated signal transmitted from the AXBT. For each segment, temperature is determined from peak frequency and depth from elapsed time since profile start. Valid signals are distinguished from noise by comparing peak signal levels and signal-to-noise ratios to predetermined thresholds. When evaluated using 387 profiles, the ARES Data Acquisition System produced temperature–depth profiles nearly identical to those generated using a Sippican MK-21 processor, while reducing the amount of noise from VHF interference included in those profiles. The ARES Profile Editor applies a series of automated checks to identify and correct common profile discrepancies before displaying the profile on an editing interface that provides simple user controls to make additional corrections. When evaluated against 1177 tropical Atlantic and Pacific AXBT profiles, the ARES automated quality control system successfully corrected 87% of the profiles without any required manual intervention. Necessary future work includes improvements to the automated quality control algorithm and algorithm evaluation against a broader dataset of temperature–depth profiles from around the world across all seasons.

Description: This work was sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (Grants N000141812819 and N0001420WX00345) and the U.S. Navy’s Civilian Institution Office with the MIT–WHOI Joint Program.

Description: © The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Spingys, C. P., Garabato, A. C. N., Legg, S., Polzin, K. L., Abrahamsen, E. P., Buckingham, C. E., Forryan, A., & Frajka-Williams, E. E. Mixing and transformation in a deep western boundary current: a case study. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 51(4), (2021): 1205-1222, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0132.1

Description: Water-mass transformation by turbulent mixing is a key part of the deep-ocean overturning, as it drives the upwelling of dense waters formed at high latitudes. Here, we quantify this transformation and its underpinning processes in a small Southern Ocean basin: the Orkney Deep. Observations reveal a focusing of the transport in density space as a deep western boundary current (DWBC) flows through the region, associated with lightening and densification of the current’s denser and lighter layers, respectively. These transformations are driven by vigorous turbulent mixing. Comparing this transformation with measurements of the rate of turbulent kinetic energy dissipation indicates that, within the DWBC, turbulence operates with a high mixing efficiency, characterized by a dissipation ratio of 0.6 to 1 that exceeds the common value of 0.2. This result is corroborated by estimates of the dissipation ratio from microstructure observations. The causes of the transformation are unraveled through a decomposition into contributions dependent on the gradients in density space of the: dianeutral mixing rate, isoneutral area, and stratification. The transformation is found to be primarily driven by strong turbulence acting on an abrupt transition from the weakly stratified bottom boundary layer to well-stratified off-boundary waters. The reduced boundary layer stratification is generated by a downslope Ekman flow associated with the DWBC’s flow along sloping topography, and is further regulated by submesoscale instabilities acting to restratify near-boundary waters. Our results provide observational evidence endorsing the importance of near-boundary mixing processes to deep-ocean overturning, and highlight the role of DWBCs as hot spots of dianeutral upwelling.

Description: CS, ACNG, AF, and EFW were supported by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Grant NE/K013181/1. ACNG was supported by the Royal Society and Wolfson Foundation. EPA and CEB were supported by NERC Grant NE/K012843/1. CEB was funded by an MSCA grant (No. 798319) from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program. EPA was supported by NERC Grant NE/N018095/1. SL and KP were supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1536453 and OCE-1536779. SL acknowledges support of Award NA18OAR4320123 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(8), (2020): 2251-2270, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0303.1.

Description: The Gulf Stream affects global climate by transporting water and heat poleward. The current’s volume transport increases markedly along the U.S. East Coast. An extensive observing program using autonomous underwater gliders provides finescale, subsurface observations of hydrography and velocity spanning more than 15° of latitude along the path of the Gulf Stream, thereby filling a 1500-km-long gap between long-term transport measurements in the Florida Strait and downstream of Cape Hatteras. Here, the glider-based observations are combined with shipboard measurements along Line W near 68°W to provide a detailed picture of the along-stream transport increase. To account for the influences of Gulf Stream curvature and adjacent circulation (e.g., corotating eddies) on transport estimates, upper- and lower-bound transports are constructed for each cross–Gulf Stream transect. The upper-bound estimate for time-averaged volume transport above 1000 m is 32.9 ± 1.2 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) in the Florida Strait, 57.3 ± 1.9 Sv at Cape Hatteras, and 75.6 ± 4.7 Sv at Line W. Corresponding lower-bound estimates are 32.3 ± 1.1 Sv in the Florida Strait, 54.5 ± 1.7 Sv at Cape Hatteras, and 69.9 ± 4.2 Sv at Line W. Using the temperature and salinity observations from gliders and Line W, waters are divided into seven classes to investigate the properties of waters that are transported by and entrained into the Gulf Stream. Most of the increase in overall Gulf Stream volume transport above 1000 m stems from the entrainment of subthermocline waters, including upper Labrador Sea Water and Eighteen Degree Water.

Description: We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Office of Naval Research (N000141713040), the National Science Foundation (OCE-0220769, OCE-1633911, OCE-1923362), NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing Program (NA14OAR4320158, NA19OAR4320074), WHOI’s Oceans and Climate Change Institute, Eastman Chemical Company, and the W. Van Alan Clark, Jr. Chair for Excellence in Oceanography at WHOI (awarded to Breck Owens).

Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Cusack, J. M., Brearley, J. A., Garabato, A. C. N., Smeed, D. A., Polzin, K. L., Velzeboer, N., & Shakespeare, C. J. Observed eddy-internal wave interactions in the Southern Ocean. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 50(10), (2020): 3042-3062, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-20-0001.1.

Description: The physical mechanisms that remove energy from the Southern Ocean’s vigorous mesoscale eddy field are not well understood. One proposed mechanism is direct energy transfer to the internal wave field in the ocean interior, via eddy-induced straining and shearing of preexisting internal waves. The magnitude, vertical structure, and temporal variability of the rate of energy transfer between eddies and internal waves is quantified from a 14-month deployment of a mooring cluster in the Scotia Sea. Velocity and buoyancy observations are decomposed into wave and eddy components, and the energy transfer is estimated using the Reynolds-averaged energy equation. We find that eddies gain energy from the internal wave field at a rate of −2.2 ± 0.6 mW m−2, integrated from the bottom to 566 m below the surface. This result can be decomposed into a positive (eddy to wave) component, equal to 0.2 ± 0.1 mW m−2, driven by horizontal straining of internal waves, and a negative (wave to eddy) component, equal to −2.5 ± 0.6 mW m−2, driven by vertical shearing of the wave spectrum. Temporal variability of the transfer rate is much greater than the mean value. Close to topography, large energy transfers are associated with low-frequency buoyancy fluxes, the underpinning physics of which do not conform to linear wave dynamics and are thereby in need of further research. Our work suggests that eddy–internal wave interactions may play a significant role in the energy balance of the Southern Ocean mesoscale eddy and internal wave fields.

Description: Funding for DIMES was provided by U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Grants NE/E007058/1 and NE/E005667/1. JMC acknowledges the support of a NERC PhD studentship, and ACNG that of the Royal Society and the Wolfson Foundation. NV acknowledges support from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes (CLEX) Honours Scholarship and the ANU PBSA Partnership - Spotless Scholarship. CJS acknowledges support from an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE180100087 and an Australian National University Futures Scheme award. Numerical simulations were conducted on the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) facility, Canberra, Australia. This study has been conducted using E.U. Copernicus Marine Service Information. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments which helped to improve the manuscript significantly. Codes and output files are available online at the project repository (https://github.com/jessecusack/DIMES_eddy_wave_interactions).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(9),(2020): 2797-2814, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-19-0326.1.

Description: Hydrographic measurements recently acquired along the thalweg of the Lifamatola Passage combined with historical moored velocity measurements immediately downstream of the sill are used to study the hydraulics, transport, mixing, and entrainment in the dense overflow. The observations suggest that the mean overflow is nearly critical at the mooring site, suggesting that a weir formula may be appropriate for estimating the overflow transport. Our assessment suggests that the weir formulas corresponding to a rectangular, triangular, or parabolic cross section all result in transports very close to the observation, suggesting their potential usage in long-term monitoring of the overflow transport or parameterizing the transport in numerical models. Analyses also suggest that deep signals within the overflow layer are blocked by the shear flow from propagating upstream, whereas the shallow wave modes of the full-depth continuously stratified flow are able to propagate upstream from the Banda Sea into the Maluku Sea. Strong mixing is found immediately downstream of the sill crest, with Thorpe-scale-based estimates of the mean dissipation rate within the overflow up to 1.1 × 10−7 W kg−1 and the region-averaged diapycnal diffusivity within the downstream overflow in the range of 2.3 × 10−3 to 10.1 × 10−3 m2 s−1. Mixing in the Lifamatola Passage results in 0.6–1.2-Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) entrainment transport added to the overflow, enhancing the deep-water renewal in the Banda Sea. A bulk diffusivity coefficient estimated in the deep Banda Sea yields 1.6 × 10−3 ± 5 × 10−4 m2 s−1, with an associated downward turbulent heat flux of 9 W m−2.

Description: This study is supported by NSFC (91858204), the CAS Strategic Priority Research Program (XDB42000000), NSFC(41720104008, 41421005, 41876025), QMSNL (2018SDKJ0104-02), and the Shandong Provincial projects (U1606402). L. Pratt was supported by the U.S. NSF Grant OCE-1657870.

Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Estapa, M., Valdes, J., Tradd, K., Sugar, J., Omand, M., & Buesseler, K. The neutrally buoyant sediment trap: two decades of progress. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 37(6), (2020): 957-973, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-19-0118.1.

Description: The biological carbon flux from the ocean’s surface into its interior has traditionally been sampled by sediment traps, which physically intercept sinking particulate matter. However, the manner in which a sediment trap interacts with the flow field around it can introduce hydrodynamic biases, motivating the development of neutral, self-ballasting trap designs. Here, the performance of one of these designs, the neutrally buoyant sediment trap (NBST), is described and evaluated. The NBST has been successfully used in a number of scientific studies since a prototype was last described in the literature two decades ago, with extensive modifications in subsequent years. Originated at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the NBST is built around a profiling float and carries cylindrical collection tubes, a feature that distinguishes it from other neutral traps described in the literature. This paper documents changes to the device that have been implemented over the last two decades, including wider trap tubes; Iridium Communications, Inc., satellite communications; and the addition of polyacrylamide gel collectors and optical sedimentation sensors. Information is also provided with the intent of aiding the development of similar devices by other researchers, including the present adaptation of the concept to utilize commercially available profiling float hardware. The performance of NBSTs built around commercial profiling floats is comparable to NBSTs built around customized floats, albeit with some additional operational considerations. Data from recent field studies comparing NBSTs and traditional, surface-tethered sediment traps are used to illustrate the performance of the instrument design. Potential improvements to the design that remain to be incorporated through future work are also outlined.

Description: Funding supporting this work has come from multiple sources over the years: the NSF Chemical Oceanography and Carbon and Water programs (most recently OCE-1660012 and OCE-1659995), the NASA Ocean Biology and Biogeochemistry and New Investigator programs (80NSSC17K0662 and NNX14AM01G), and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Technology Award.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(9), (2020): 2669-2688, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0077.1

Description: The scale-dependent variance of tracer properties in the ocean bears the imprint of the oceanic eddy field. Anomalies in spice (which combines anomalies in temperature T and salinity S on isopycnal surfaces) act as passive tracers beneath the surface mixed layer (ML). We present an analysis of spice distributions along isopycnals in the upper 200 m of the ocean, calculated with over 9000 vertical profiles of T and S measured along ~4800 km of ship tracks in the Bay of Bengal. The data are from three separate research cruises—in the winter monsoon season of 2013 and in the late and early summer monsoon seasons of 2015 and 2018. We present a spectral analysis of horizontal tracer variance statistics on scales ranging from the submesoscale (~1 km) to the mesoscale (~100 km). Isopycnal layers that are closer to the ML-base exhibit redder spectra of tracer variance at scales ≲10 km than is predicted by theories of quasigeostrophic turbulence or frontogenesis. Two plausible explanations are postulated. The first is that stirring by submesoscale motions and shear dispersion by near-inertial waves enhance effective horizontal mixing and deplete tracer variance at horizontal scales ≲10 km in this region. The second is that the spice anomalies are coherent with dynamical properties such as potential vorticity, and not interpretable as passively stirred.

Description: We are grateful to the captain and crew of the R/V Roger Revelle and the R/V Thomas G. Thompson, and all ASIRI-OMM and MISO-BOB scientists. We thank Prof. Andrew Thompson and an anonymous reviewer for suggestions that improved the manuscript. This work was carried out under the Office of Naval Research’s Air-Sea Interaction Regional Initiative (ASIRI) and Monsoon Intra-Seasonal Oscillations in the Bay of Bengal (MISO-BOB) research initiatives, in collaboration with the Indian Ministry of Earth Science’s Ocean Mixing and Monsoons (OMM) initiative supported by the Monsoon Mission. Support came from ONR Grants N00014-16-1-2470, N00014-13-1-0451, N00014-17-1-2390 (G.S.J. and A.M.), N00014-14-1-0455 (J.M. and J.N), N00014-17-1-2511 (J.M.), N00014-13-1-0489, N00014-17-1-2391 (A.L.), N00014-15-1-2634 (E.S.), N00014-13-1-0456, N00014-17-1-2355 (A.T.), and N00014-13-1-0453, N00014-17-1-2880 (J.F.).

Description: 2021-02-28

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 49(12), (2019): 3127-3143, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-19-0011.1.

Description: The Intermediate Western Boundary Current (IWBC) transports Antarctic Intermediate Water across the Vitória–Trindade Ridge (VTR), a seamount chain at ~20°S off Brazil. Recent studies suggest that the IWBC develops a strong cyclonic recirculation in Tubarão Bight, upstream of the VTR, with weak time dependency. We herein use new quasi-synoptic observations, data from the Argo array, and a regional numerical model to describe the structure and variability of the IWBC and to investigate its dynamics. Both shipboard acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) data and trajectories of Argo floats confirm the existence of the IWBC recirculation, which is also captured by our Regional Oceanic Modeling System (ROMS) simulation. An “intermediate-layer” quasigeostrophic (QG) model indicates that the ROMS time-mean flow is a good proxy for the IWBC steady state, as revealed by largely parallel isolines of streamfunction ψ⎯ and potential vorticity Q⎯; a ψ⎯−Q⎯ scatter diagram also shows that the IWBC is potentially unstable. Further analysis of the ROMS simulation reveals that remotely generated, westward-propagating nonlinear eddies are the main source of variability in the region. These eddies enter the domain through the Tubarão Bight eastern edge and strongly interact with the IWBC. As they are advected downstream and negotiate the local topography, the eddies grow explosively through horizontal shear production.

Description: We thank Frank O. Smith for copy editing and proofreading this manuscript. This study was financed in part by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—CAPES, Brazil—Finance Code 001 and by Projeto REMARSUL (Processo CAPES 88882.158621/2014-01), Projeto VT-Dyn (Processo FAPESP 2015/21729-4) and Projeto SUBMESO (Processo CNPq 442926/2015-4). Rocha was supported by a WHOI Postdoctoral Scholarship.

Description: 2020-06-06

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(4), (2020): 887-905, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0110.1.

Description: The Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) encounters the Galápagos Archipelago on the equator as it flows eastward across the Pacific. The impact of the Galápagos Archipelago on the EUC in the eastern equatorial Pacific remains largely unknown. In this study, the path of the EUC as it reaches the Galápagos Archipelago is measured directly using high-resolution observations obtained by autonomous underwater gliders. Gliders were deployed along three lines that define a closed region with the Galápagos Archipelago as the eastern boundary and 93°W from 2°S to 2°N as the western boundary. Twelve transects were simultaneously occupied along the three lines during 52 days in April–May 2016. Analysis of individual glider transects and average sections along each line show that the EUC splits around the Galápagos Archipelago. Velocity normal to the transects is used to estimate net horizontal volume transport into the volume. Downward integration of the net horizontal transport profile provides an estimate of the time- and areal-averaged vertical velocity profile over the 52-day time period. Local maxima in vertical velocity occur at depths of 25 and 280 m with magnitudes of (1.7 ± 0.6) × 10−5 m s−1 and (8.0 ± 1.6) × 10−5 m s−1, respectively. Volume transport as a function of salinity indicates that water crossing 93°W south (north) of 0.4°S tends to flow around the south (north) side of the Galápagos Archipelago. Comparisons are made between previous observational and modeling studies with differences attributed to effects of the strong 2015/16 El Niño event, the annual cycle of local winds, and varying longitudes between studies of the equatorial Pacific.

Description: This work was supported by National Science Foundation (Grants OCE-1232971 and OCE-1233282) and the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program (Grant 80NSSC17K0443).

Description: Also published as: Buoy Technology, Transactions 2nd International Buoy Technology Symposium/Exposition, Washington, D.C., September 18-20, 1967, pp.409-418, 1967.

Description: Since January 1965,a program has been underway at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to measure currents at a limited number of fixed sites on a year round basis. Initially, one site was instrumented with both surface and subsurface moorings. The program has now been expanded to 4 major sites, extending along 70°W, from 39°20 ' N to the Hatteras Abyssal Plain at 30°N . In nearly three years of operation, a total of 65 moorings have been placed at the working sites, for periods up to six months. Recoveries from these sites have provided many velocity records of excellent quality. The repetitive exposure of moorings of essentially similar design under relatively standardized conditions has served to define clearly the design and operational problems that are inherent in such a program. A brief account is given of some of the problems encountered in routine buoy setting operations, and some of the results obtained from the measurements.

Description: The Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-66-C0241~ NR 083-004.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Cusack, J. M., Voet, G., Alford, M. H., Girton, J. B., Carter, G. S., Pratt, L. J., Pearson-Potts, K. A., & Tan, S. Persistent turbulence in the Samoan Passage. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 49(12), (2019): 3179-3197, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-19-0116.1.

Description: Abyssal waters forming the lower limb of the global overturning circulation flow through the Samoan Passage and are modified by intense mixing. Thorpe-scale-based estimates of dissipation from moored profilers deployed on top of two sills for 17 months reveal that turbulence is continuously generated in the passage. Overturns were observed in a density band in which the Richardson number was often smaller than ¼, consistent with shear instability occurring at the upper interface of the fast-flowing bottom water layer. The magnitude of dissipation was found to be stable on long time scales from weeks to months. A second array of 12 moored profilers deployed for a shorter duration but profiling at higher frequency was able to resolve variability in dissipation on time scales from days to hours. At some mooring locations, near-inertial and tidal modulation of the dissipation rate was observed. However, the modulation was not spatially coherent across the passage. The magnitude and vertical structure of dissipation from observations at one of the major sills is compared with an idealized 2D numerical simulation that includes a barotropic tidal forcing. Depth-integrated dissipation rates agree between model and observations to within a factor of 3. The tide has a negligible effect on the mean dissipation. These observations reinforce the notion that the Samoan Passage is an important mixing hot spot in the global ocean where waters are being transformed continuously.

Description: The authors thank Zhongxiang Xao and Jody Klymak, who provided earlier setups of the numerical model, and also Arjun Jagannathan for insightful discussions on the subject of flow over topography. We also thank John Mickett and Eric Boget for their assistance in designing, deploying, and recovering the moorings. In addition, we also thank the crew and scientists aboard the R/V Revelle and R/V Thompson, without whom the data presented in this paper could not have been gathered. Ilker Fer and two anonymous reviewers provided thoughtful feedback that improved the paper. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE-1029268, OCE-1029483, OCE-1657264, OCE-1657795, OCE-1657870, and OCE-1658027.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(3), (2020): 715-726, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0021.1.

Description: Closing the overturning circulation of bottom water requires abyssal transformation to lighter densities and upwelling. Where and how buoyancy is gained and water is transported upward remain topics of debate, not least because the available observations generally show downward-increasing turbulence levels in the abyss, apparently implying mean vertical turbulent buoyancy-flux divergence (densification). Here, we synthesize available observations indicating that bottom water is made less dense and upwelled in fracture zone valleys on the flanks of slow-spreading midocean ridges, which cover more than one-half of the seafloor area in some regions. The fracture zones are filled almost completely with water flowing up-valley and gaining buoyancy. Locally, valley water is transformed to lighter densities both in thin boundary layers that are in contact with the seafloor, where the buoyancy flux must vanish to match the no-flux boundary condition, and in thicker layers associated with downward-decreasing turbulence levels below interior maxima associated with hydraulic overflows and critical-layer interactions. Integrated across the valley, the turbulent buoyancy fluxes show maxima near the sidewall crests, consistent with net convergence below, with little sensitivity of this pattern to the vertical structure of the turbulence profiles, which implies that buoyancy flux convergence in the layers with downward-decreasing turbulence levels dominates over the divergence elsewhere, accounting for the net transformation to lighter densities in fracture zone valleys. We conclude that fracture zone topography likely exerts a controlling influence on the transformation and upwelling of bottom water in many areas of the global ocean.

Description: The data used in this study were collected in the context of several projects funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), in particular BBTRE (OCE-9415589 and OCE-9415598) and DoMORE (OCE-1235094). Funding for the analysis was provided as part of the NSF DoMORE and DECIMAL (OCE-1735618) projects. Author Ijichi is a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Overseas Research Fellow. Comments on an early draft of this paper by Jim Ledwell and Bryan Kaiser, as well as topical discussions with Jörn Callies and Trevor McDougall, are gratefully acknowledged. The paper was greatly improved during the review process, in particular because of the critical comments from one of the two anonymous reviewers.

Description: The journal of a cruise of R/V CHAIN from Bermuda to Freetown, Sierra Leone during February and March, 1961, is the basis of this report. Location of observations are given. The portion of the Mid- Atlantic Ridge lying along the equator was surveyed from 10° to 19°W, and new information concerning the slope and orientation of rift zones was obtained. A detailed bathymetric survey of the Romanche Trench was made. A continuous temperature-depth profile, from the surface to 100 meters, was made along the ship 's track with a thermistor chain. Surface shear was measured with pitotmeters mounted on the chain (surface water velocity relative to the water velocity at the depth of the pitotmeter), to determine the strength and direction of the equatorial undercurrent.

Description: The Office of Naval Research under Contract Nonr-, 2196 (00)

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 50(3),(2020): 595-613, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0108.1.

Description: Small estuaries in Mediterranean climates display pronounced salinity variability at seasonal and event time scales. Here, we use a hydrodynamic model of the Coos Estuary, Oregon, to examine the seasonal variability of the salinity dynamics and estuarine exchange flow. The exchange flow is primarily driven by tidal processes, varying with the spring–neap cycle rather than discharge or the salinity gradient. The salinity distribution is rarely in equilibrium with discharge conditions because during the wet season the response time scale is longer than discharge events, while during low flow it is longer than the entire dry season. Consequently, the salt field is rarely fully adjusted to the forcing and common power-law relations between the salinity intrusion and discharge do not apply. Further complicating the salinity dynamics is the estuarine geometry that consists of multiple branching channel segments with distinct freshwater sources. These channel segments act as subestuaries that import both higher- and lower-salinity water and export intermediate salinities. Throughout the estuary, tidal dispersion scales with tidal velocity squared, and likely includes jet–sink flow at the mouth, lateral shear dispersion, and tidal trapping in branching channel segments inside the estuary. While the estuarine inflow is strongly correlated with tidal amplitude, the outflow, stratification, and total mixing in the estuary are dependent on the seasonal variation in river discharge, which is similar to estuaries that are dominated by subtidal exchange flow.

Description: We thank two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments, the staff of the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve for providing time series data, and Parker MacCready for sharing LiveOcean boundary conditions. This work was partially sponsored by the National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative, which supports collaborative research that addresses coastal management problems important to the reserves. The Science Collaborative is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and managed by the University of Michigan Water Center (NAI4NOS4190145). Computations were performed on the University of Oregon high performance computer Talapas.

Description: 2020-08-26

Description: © The Author(s), 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Martini, K. I., Murphy, D. J., Schmitt, R. W., & Larson, N. G. Reply to "comments on 'corrections for pumped SBE 41CP CTDs determined from stratified tank experiments'". Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 37(2), (2020): 357-363, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-19-0171.1.

Description: The response in Johnson (2020) that the method used to determine cell thermal mass correction coefficients for SBE 41CP CTD data from Argo floats is biased as determined by Martini et al. (2019) is valid. However, the recommendation for correction coefficients should not be followed due to these three errors in Johnson (2020): Alignment is as large a source of dynamic error as cell thermal mass in the SBE 41CP CTD. Order of operations was overlooked, so that cell thermal mass is used to correct for alignment errors caused by the temporal mismatch of temperature and conductivity. The cell thermal mass corrections determined in Johnson et al. (2007) and Johnson (2020) also bias salinity. In this response we will do the following: Detail how the corrections in Johnson (2020) are biased because the optimization procedure does not accurately model physics in the tank and conductivity cell. Verify using in situ data from Argo floats deployed in the ocean that alignment is a significant source of error for the SBE 41CP as shown in Martini et al. (2019). Determine cell thermal mass correction coefficients from the stratified tank experiment merging the methods of Johnson (2020) and Martini et al. (2019) to optimize against a model that better represents the physics in the tank and conductivity cell. Compare the corrections using in situ data using the coefficients determined in Johnson et al. (2007), Martini et al. (2019), Johnson (2020), and this manuscript.

Description: Thanks to Pelle Robbins for finding the in situ profiles used for this analysis in the vast database of Argo floats, John Gilson showing me how to access that high-resolution data, Ray Schmitt for use of the stratified tank, Susan Wijffels, Breck Owens, and Annie Wong for intellectual support, and Diego Sorrentino and Vlad Simontov for validating the sampling scheme in the SBE 41CP.

Description: 2020-08-24

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 49(7), (2019): 1889-1904, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0053.1.

Description: A high-resolution numerical model, together with in situ and satellite observations, is used to explore the nature and dynamics of the dominant high-frequency (from one day to one week) variability in Denmark Strait. Mooring measurements in the center of the strait reveal that warm water “flooding events” occur, whereby the North Icelandic Irminger Current (NIIC) propagates offshore and advects subtropical-origin water northward through the deepest part of the sill. Two other types of mesoscale processes in Denmark Strait have been described previously in the literature, known as “boluses” and “pulses,” associated with a raising and lowering of the overflow water interface. Our measurements reveal that flooding events occur in conjunction with especially pronounced pulses. The model indicates that the NIIC hydrographic front is maintained by a balance between frontogenesis by the large-scale flow and frontolysis by baroclinic instability. Specifically, the temperature and salinity tendency equations demonstrate that the eddies act to relax the front, while the mean flow acts to sharpen it. Furthermore, the model reveals that the two dense water processes—boluses and pulses (and hence flooding events)—are dynamically related to each other and tied to the meandering of the hydrographic front in the strait. Our study thus provides a general framework for interpreting the short-time-scale variability of Denmark Strait Overflow Water entering the Irminger Sea.

Description: MAS was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grants OCE-1558742 and OCE-1534618. RSP, PL, and DM were supported by NSF under Grants OCE-1558742 and OCE-1259618. WJvA was supported by the Helmholtz Infrastructure Initiative FRAM. TWNH and MA were supported by NSF under Grants OCE-1633124 and OCE-118123.

Description: 2020-07-01

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Semper, S., Vage, K., Pickart, R. S., Valdimarsson, H., Torres, D. J., & Jonsson, S. The emergence of the North Icelandic Jet and its evolution from northeast Iceland to Denmark Strait. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 49(10), (2019): 2499-2521, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0088.1.

Description: The North Icelandic Jet (NIJ) is an important source of dense water to the overflow plume passing through Denmark Strait. The properties, structure, and transport of the NIJ are investigated for the first time along its entire pathway following the continental slope north of Iceland, using 13 hydrographic/velocity surveys of high spatial resolution conducted between 2004 and 2018. The comprehensive dataset reveals that the current originates northeast of Iceland and increases in volume transport by roughly 0.4 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) per 100 km until 300 km upstream of Denmark Strait, at which point the highest transport is reached. The bulk of the NIJ transport is confined to a small area in Θ–S space centered near −0.29° ± 0.16°C in Conservative Temperature and 35.075 ± 0.006 g kg−1 in Absolute Salinity. While the hydrographic properties of this transport mode are not significantly modified along the NIJ’s pathway, the transport estimates vary considerably between and within the surveys. Neither a clear seasonal signal nor a consistent link to atmospheric forcing was found, but barotropic and/or baroclinic instability is likely active in the current. The NIJ displays a double-core structure in roughly 50% of the occupations, with the two cores centered at the 600- and 800-m isobaths, respectively. The transport of overflow water 300 km upstream of Denmark Strait exceeds 1.8 ± 0.3 Sv, which is substantially larger than estimates from a year-long mooring array and hydrographic/velocity surveys closer to the strait, where the NIJ merges with the separated East Greenland Current. This implies a more substantial contribution of the NIJ to the Denmark Strait overflow plume than previously envisaged.

Description: Six different research vessels were involved in the collection of the data used in this study: RRS James Clark Ross, R/V Knorr, R/V Bjarni Sæmundsson, R/V Håkon Mosby, NRV Alliance, and R/V Kristine Bonnevie. We thank the captain and crew of each of these vessels for their hard work as well as the many watch standers who have sailed on the cruises and helped collect the measurements. We also thank Frank Bahr for processing the VMADCP data collected on NRV Alliance and Magnús Danielsen for the processing of the hydrographic data collected on R/V Bjarni Sæmundsson. We acknowledge Leah Trafford McRaven for assistance with Fig. 1 and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, which improved the manuscript. Funding for the project was provided by the Bergen Research Foundation Grant BFS2016REK01 (K. Våge and S. Semper), the Norwegian Research Council under Grant Agreement 231647 (K. Våge), and the U.S. National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1259618 and OCE-1756361 (R. S. Pickart and D. J. Torres), as well as OCE-1558742 (R. S. Pickart). The dataset is available on PANGAEA under https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.903535.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 49(9), (2019): 2237-2254, doi: 10.1175/JPO-D-18-0181.1.

Description: A cluster of 45 drifters deployed in the Bay of Bengal is tracked for a period of four months. Pair dispersion statistics, from observed drifter trajectories and simulated trajectories based on surface geostrophic velocity, are analyzed as a function of drifter separation and time. Pair dispersion suggests nonlocal dynamics at submesoscales of 1–20 km, likely controlled by the energetic mesoscale eddies present during the observations. Second-order velocity structure functions and their Helmholtz decomposition, however, suggest local dispersion and divergent horizontal flow at scales below 20 km. This inconsistency cannot be explained by inertial oscillations alone, as has been reported in recent studies, and is likely related to other nondispersive processes that impact structure functions but do not enter pair dispersion statistics. At scales comparable to the deformation radius LD, which is approximately 60 km, we find dynamics in agreement with Richardson’s law and observe local dispersion in both pair dispersion statistics and second-order velocity structure functions.

Description: This research was supported by the Air Sea Interaction Regional Initiative (ASIRI) under ONR Grant N00014-13-1-0451 (SE and AM) and ONR Grant N00014-13-1-0477 (VH and LC). Additionally, AM and SE thank NSF (Grant OCE-I434788) and ONR (Grant N00014-16-1-2470) for support; VH and LC were further supported by ONR Grant N00014-15-1-2286 and NOAA GDP Grant NA10OAR4320156. We thank Joe LaCasce, Dhruv Balwada, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful comments and discussions that significantly improved this manuscript. The authors thank the captain and crew of the R/V Roger Revelle. The SVP-type drifters are part of the Global Drifter Program and supported by ONR Grant N00014-15-1-2286 and NOAA GDP Grant NA10OAR4320156 and are available under http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/dac/. The Ssalto/Duacs altimeter products were produced and distributed by the Copernicus Marine and Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS, http://www.marine.copernicus.eu).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 49(4), (2019): 1035-1053, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0136.1.

Description: Ocean stratification and the vertical extent of the mixed layer influence the rate at which the ocean and atmosphere exchange properties. This process has direct impacts for anthropogenic heat and carbon uptake in the Southern Ocean. Submesoscale instabilities that evolve over space (1–10 km) and time (from hours to days) scales directly influence mixed layer variability and are ubiquitous in the Southern Ocean. Mixed layer eddies contribute to mixed layer restratification, while down-front winds, enhanced by strong synoptic storms, can erode stratification by a cross-frontal Ekman buoyancy flux. This study investigates the role of these submesoscale processes on the subseasonal and interannual variability of the mixed layer stratification using four years of high-resolution glider data in the Southern Ocean. An increase of stratification from winter to summer occurs due to a seasonal warming of the mixed layer. However, we observe transient decreases in stratification lasting from days to weeks, which can arrest the seasonal restratification by up to two months after surface heat flux becomes positive. This leads to interannual differences in the timing of seasonal restratification by up to 36 days. Parameterizing the Ekman buoyancy flux in a one-dimensional mixed layer model reduces the magnitude of stratification compared to when the model is run using heat and freshwater fluxes alone. Importantly, the reduced stratification occurs during the spring restratification period, thereby holding important implications for mixed layer dynamics in climate models as well as physical–biological coupling in the Southern Ocean.

Description: MdP acknowledges numerous research visits to the Department of Marine Science, University of Gothenburg, and a visit to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which greatly enhanced this work. We thank SANAP and the captain and crew of the S.A. Agulhas II for their assistance in the deployment and retrieval of the gliders. We acknowledge the work of SAMERC-STS for housing, managing, and piloting the gliders. SS was supported by NRF-SANAP Grant SNA14071475720 and a Wallenberg Academy Fellowship (WAF 2015.0186). Lastly, SS thanks the numerous technical assistance, advice, and IOP hosting provided by Geoff Shilling and Craig Lee of the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington.

Description: 2020-04-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 36(4), (2019): 733-744, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-18-0050.1.

Description: Sea-Bird Scientific SBE 41CP CTDs are used on autonomous floats in the global Argo ocean observing program to measure the temperature and salinity of the upper ocean. While profiling, the sensors are subject to dynamic errors as they profile through vertical gradients. Applying dynamic corrections to the temperature and conductivity data reduces these errors and improves sensor accuracy. A series of laboratory experiments conducted in a stratified tank are used to characterize dynamic errors and determine corrections. The corrections are adapted for Argo floats, and recommendations for future implementation are presented.

Description: 2020-04-23

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 49(6), (2019):1619-1637, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0175.1.

Description: Although the hydrodynamics of river meanders are well studied, the influence of curvature on flow in estuaries, with alternating tidal flow and varying water levels and salinity gradients, is less well understood. This paper describes a field study on curvature effects in a narrow salt-marsh creek with sharp bends. The key observations, obtained during times of negligible stratification, are 1) distinct differences between secondary flow during ebb and flood, with helical circulation as in rivers during ebb and a reversed circulation during flood, and 2) maximum (ebb and flood) streamwise velocities near the inside of the bend, unlike typical river bend flow. The streamwise velocity structure is explained by the lack of a distinct point bar and the relatively deep cross section in the estuary, which means that curvature-induced inward momentum redistribution is not overcome by outward redistribution by frictional and topographic effects. Through differential advection of the along-estuary salinity gradient, the laterally sheared streamwise velocity generates lateral salinity differences, with the saltiest water near the inside during flood. The resulting lateral baroclinic pressure gradient force enhances the standard helical circulation during ebb but counteracts it during flood. This first leads to a reversed secondary circulation during flood in the outer part of the cross section, which triggers a positive feedback mechanism by bringing slower-moving water from the outside inward along the surface. This leads to a reversal of the vertical shear in the streamwise flow, and therefore in the centrifugal force, which further enhances the reversed secondary circulation.

Description: This project was funded by NSF Grant OCE-1634490. During this work W.M. Kranenburg was supported as USGS Postdoctoral Scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. A.M.P. Garcia was supported by the Michael J. Kowalski Fellowship in Ocean Science and Engineering (AMPG), and the Diversity Fellowship of the MIT Office of the Dean of Graduate Education (AMPG). The authors thank Jay Sisson for the technical support and Peter Traykovski for providing the bathymetric data. Also, the suggestions for improvement by Dr. K. Blanckaert and an anonymous reviewer are thankfully acknowledged.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 49(6), (2019): 1561-1575, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0002.1.

Description: Within the pycnocline, where diapycnal mixing is suppressed, both the vertical movement (uplift) of isopycnal surfaces and upward motion along sloping isopycnals supply nutrients to the euphotic layer, but the relative importance of each of these mechanisms is unknown. We present a method for decomposing vertical velocity w into two components in a Lagrangian frame: vertical velocity along sloping isopycnal surfaces and the adiabatic vertical velocity of isopycnal surfaces . We show that , where is the isopycnal slope and is the geometric aspect ratio of the flow, and that accounts for 10%–25% of the total vertical velocity w for isopycnal slopes representative of the midlatitude pycnocline. We perform the decomposition of w in a process study model of a midlatitude eddying flow field generated with a range of isopycnal slopes. A spectral decomposition of the velocity components shows that while is the largest contributor to vertical velocity, is of comparable magnitude at horizontal scales less than about 10 km, that is, at submesoscales. Increasing the horizontal grid resolution of models is known to increase vertical velocity; this increase is disproportionately due to better resolution of , as is shown here by comparing 1- and 4-km resolution model runs. Along-isopycnal vertical transport can be an important contributor to the vertical flux of tracers, including oxygen, nutrients, and chlorophyll, although we find weak covariance between vertical velocity and nutrient anomaly in our model.

Description: MAF was supported by a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and AM by NSF OCE-I434788. The authors thank Glenn Flierl and Ruth Curry for helpful conversations, and three anonymous reviewers for comments that improved the manuscript.

Description: 2020-06-11

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 1555-1566, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0231.1.

Description: A primary challenge in modeling flow over shallow coral reefs is accurately characterizing the bottom drag. Previous studies over continental shelves and sandy beaches suggest surface gravity waves should enhance the drag on the circulation over coral reefs. The influence of surface gravity waves on drag over four platform reefs in the Red Sea is examined using observations from 6-month deployments of current and pressure sensors burst sampling at 1Hz for 4–5min. Depth-average current fluctuations U0 within each burst are dominated by wave orbital velocities uw that account for 80%–90%of the burst variance and have a magnitude of order 10 cm s21, similar to the lower-frequency depth-average current Uavg. Previous studies have shown that the cross-reef bottom stress balances the pressure gradient over these reefs. A bottom stress estimate that neglects the waves (rCdaUavgjUavgj, where r is water density and Cda is a drag coefficient) balances the observed pressure gradient when uw is smaller than Uavg but underestimates the pressure gradient when uw is larger than Uavg (by a factor of 3–5 when uw 5 2Uavg), indicating the neglected waves enhance the bottom stress. In contrast, a bottom stress estimate that includes the waves [rCda(Uavg 1 U0)jUavg 1 U0j)] balances the observed pressure gradient independent of the relative size of uw and Uavg, indicating that this estimate accounts for the wave enhancement of the bottom stress. A parameterization proposed by Wright and Thompson provides a reasonable estimate of the total bottom stress (including the waves) given the burst-averaged current and the wave orbital velocity.

Description: The Red Sea field program was supported by Awards USA 00002 and KSA 00011 made by KAUST. S. Lentz was supported for the analysis by NSF Award OCE-1558343.

Description: 2019-01-13

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 35 (2018): 893-910, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-17-0102.1.

Description: Rotary sidescan sonars are widely used to image the seabed given their high temporal and spatial resolution. This high resolution is necessary to resolve bedform dynamics and evolution; however, sidescan sonars do not directly measure bathymetry, limiting their utility. When sidescan sonars are mounted close to the seabed, bedforms may create acoustical “shadows” that render previous methods that invert the backscatter intensity to estimate bathymetry and are based on the assumption of a fully insonified seabed ineffective. This is especially true in coastal regions, where bedforms are common features whose large height relative to the water depth may significantly influence the surrounding flow. A method is described that utilizes sonar shadows to estimate bedform height and asymmetry. The method accounts for the periodic structure of bedform fields and the projection of the shadows onto adjacent bedforms. It is validated with bathymetric observations of wave-orbital ripples, with wavelengths ranging from 0.3 to 0.8 m, and tidally reversing megaripples, with wavelengths from 5 to 8 m. In both cases, bathymetric-measuring sonars were deployed in addition to a rotary sidescan sonar to provide a ground truth; however, the bathymetric sonars typically measure different and smaller areas than the rotary sidescan sonar. The shadow-based method and bathymetric-measuring sonar data produce estimates of bedform height that agree by 34.0% ± 27.2% for wave-orbital ripples and 16.6% ± 14.7% for megaripples. Errors for estimates of asymmetry are 1.9% ± 2.1% for wave-orbital ripples and 11.2% ± 9.6% for megaripples.

Description: This project is partially supported by the National Science Foundation through a Graduate Research Fellowship and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative Fellowship. Additionally, funding used in developing the method was obtained from NSF Grants OCE-1634481 and OCE-1635151. Field work was funded under ONR Grants N00014-06-10329 and N00014-13-1-0364.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 435-453, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0122.1.

Description: Observations of surface waves, currents, and turbulence at the Columbia River mouth are used to investigate the source and vertical structure of turbulence in the surface boundary layer. Turbulent velocity data collected on board freely drifting Surface Wave Instrument Float with Tracking (SWIFT) buoys are corrected for platform motions to estimate turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and TKE dissipation rates. Both of these quantities are correlated with wave steepness, which has previously been shown to determine wave breaking within the same dataset. Estimates of the turbulent length scale increase linearly with distance from the free surface, and roughness lengths estimated from velocity statistics scale with significant wave height. The vertical decay of turbulence is consistent with a balance between vertical diffusion and dissipation. Below a critical depth, a power-law scaling commonly applied in the literature works well to fit the data. Above this depth, an exponential scaling fits the data well. These results, which are in a surface-following reference frame, are reconciled with results from the literature in a fixed reference frame. A mapping between free-surface and mean-surface reference coordinates suggests 30% of the TKE is dissipated above the mean sea surface.

Description: Funding for this project was provided by the Office of Naval Research as part of the RIVET-II DRI, and for the DARLA group.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 479-509, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0283.1.

Description: Lateral submesoscale processes and their influence on vertical stratification at shallow salinity fronts in the central Bay of Bengal during the winter monsoon are explored using high-resolution data from a cruise in November 2013. The observations are from a radiator survey centered at a salinity-controlled density front, embedded in a zone of moderate mesoscale strain (0.15 times the Coriolis parameter) and forced by winds with a downfront orientation. Below a thin mixed layer, often ≤10 m, the analysis shows several dynamical signatures indicative of submesoscale processes: (i) negative Ertel potential vorticity (PV); (ii) low-PV anomalies with O(1–10) km lateral extent, where the vorticity estimated on isopycnals and the isopycnal thickness are tightly coupled, varying in lockstep to yield low PV; (iii) flow conditions susceptible to forced symmetric instability (FSI) or bearing the imprint of earlier FSI events; (iv) negative lateral gradients in the absolute momentum field (inertial instability); and (v) strong contribution from differential sheared advection at O(1) km scales to the growth rate of the depth-averaged stratification. The findings here show one-dimensional vertical processes alone cannot explain the vertical stratification and its lateral variability over O(1–10) km scales at the radiator survey.

Description: S. Ramachandran acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation through award OCE 1558849 and the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-13-1-0456 and N00014-17- 1-2355. A. Tandon acknowledges support from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-13-1-0456 and N00014-17-1-2355. J. T. Farrar and R. A. Weller were supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-1-0453, to collect the UCTD data and process theUCTD and shipboard meteorological data. J. Nash, J. Mackinnon, and A. F. Waterhouse acknowledge support from the U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-13-1-0503 and N00014-14-1-0455. E. Shroyer acknowledges support from the U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grants N00014-14-10236 and N00014-15- 12634. A. Mahadevan acknowledges support fromthe U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-10451. A. J. Lucas and R. Pinkel acknowledge support from the U. S. Office of Naval Research, Grant N00014-13-1-0489.

Description: 2018-08-26

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 2457-2475, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0186.1.

Description: A subpolar marginal sea, like the Nordic seas, is a transition zone between the temperature-stratified subtropics (the alpha ocean) and the salinity-stratified polar regions (the beta ocean). An inflow of Atlantic Water circulates these seas as a boundary current that is cooled and freshened downstream, eventually to outflow as Deep and Polar Water. Stratification in the boundary region is dominated by a thermocline over the continental slope and a halocline over the continental shelves, separating Atlantic Water from Deep and Polar Water, respectively. A conceptual model is introduced for the circulation and water mass transformation in a subpolar marginal sea to explore the potential interaction between the alpha and beta oceans. Freshwater input into the shelf regions has a slight strengthening effect on the Atlantic inflow, but more prominently impacts the water mass composition of the outflow. This impact of freshwater, characterized by enhancing Polar Water outflow and suppressing Deep Water outflow, is strongly determined by the source location of freshwater. Concretely, perturbations in upstream freshwater sources, like the Baltic freshwater outflow into the Nordic seas, have an order of magnitude larger potential to impact water mass transports than perturbations in downstream sources like the Arctic freshwater outflow. These boundary current dynamics are directly related to the qualitative stratification in transition zones and illustrate the interaction between the alpha and beta oceans.

Description: This research was supported by the Research Council of Norway project NORTH. Support for the publication was provided by the University of Bergen. Ocean Outlook has supported a research visit for EL to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute where much of the current work has been carried out. Support forMAS was provided by the National Science Foundation Grant OCE-1558742.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 2799-2827, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0057.1.

Description: The fjords that connect Greenland’s glaciers to the ocean are gateways for importing heat to melt ice and for exporting meltwater into the ocean. The transport of heat and meltwater can be modulated by various drivers of fjord circulation, including freshwater, local winds, and shelf variability. Shelf-forced flows (also known as the intermediary circulation) are the dominant mode of variability in two major fjords of east Greenland, but we lack a dynamical understanding of the fjord’s response to shelf forcing. Building on observations from east Greenland, we use numerical simulations and analytical models to explore the dynamics of shelf-driven flows. For the parameter space of Greenlandic fjords, we find that the fjord’s response is primarily a function of three nondimensional parameters: the fjord width over the deformation radius (W/Rd), the forcing time scale over the fjord adjustment time scale, and the forcing amplitude (shelf pycnocline displacements) over the upper-layer thickness. The shelf-forced flows in both the numerical simulations and the observations can largely be explained by a simple analytical model for Kelvin waves propagating around the fjord. For fjords with W/Rd 〉 0.5 (most Greenlandic fjords), 3D dynamics are integral to understanding shelf forcing—the fjord dynamics cannot be approximated with 2D models that neglect cross-fjord structure. The volume flux exchanged between the fjord and shelf increases for narrow fjords and peaks around the resonant forcing frequency, dropping off significantly at higher- and lower-frequency forcing.

Description: This work was funded by NSF Grant OCE-1536856 and by the NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 905-923, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0133.1.

Description: Observations of turbulent kinetic energy, dissipation, and turbulent stress were collected in the middle reaches of Chesapeake Bay and were used to assess second-moment closure predictions of turbulence generated beneath breaking waves. Dissipation scaling indicates that the turbulent flow structure observed during a 10-day wind event was dominated by a three-layer response that consisted of 1) a wave transport layer, 2) a surface log layer, and 3) a tidal, bottom boundary layer limited by stable stratification. Below the wave transport layer, turbulent mixing was limited by stable stratification. Within the wave transport layer, where dissipation was balanced by a divergence in the vertical turbulent kinetic energy flux, the eddy viscosity was significantly underestimated by second-moment turbulence closure models, suggesting that breaking waves homogenized the mixed surface layer to a greater extent than the simple model of TKE diffusing away from a source at the surface. While the turbulent transport of TKE occurred largely downgradient, the intermittent downward sweeps of momentum generated by breaking waves occurred largely independent of the mean shear. The underprediction of stress in the wave transport layer by second-moment closures was likely due to the inability of the eddy viscosity model to capture the nonlocal turbulent transport of the momentum flux beneath breaking waves. Finally, the authors hypothesize that large-scale coherent turbulent eddies played a significant role in transporting momentum generated near the surface to depth.

Description: This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1061609 and OCE-1339032.

Description: 2018-10-19

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 35 (2018): 281-297, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-17-0076.1.

Description: The wavenumber spectrum of sea surface height (SSH) is an important indicator of the dynamics of the ocean interior. While the SSH wavenumber spectrum has been well studied at mesoscale wavelengths and longer, using both in situ oceanographic measurements and satellite altimetry, it remains largely unknown for wavelengths less than ~70 km. The Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission aims to resolve the SSH wavenumber spectrum at 15–150-km wavelengths, which is specified as one of the mission requirements. The mission calibration and validation (CalVal) requires the ground truth of a synoptic SSH field to resolve the targeted wavelengths, but no existing observational network is able to fulfill the task. A high-resolution global ocean simulation is used to conduct an observing system simulation experiment (OSSE) to identify the suitable oceanographic in situ measurements for SWOT SSH CalVal. After fixing 20 measuring locations (the minimum number for resolving 15–150-km wavelengths) along the SWOT swath, four instrument platforms were tested: pressure-sensor-equipped inverted echo sounders (PIES), underway conductivity–temperature–depth (UCTD) sensors, instrumented moorings, and underwater gliders. In the context of the OSSE, PIES was found to be an unsuitable tool for the target region and for SSH scales 15–70 km; the slowness of a single UCTD leads to significant aliasing by high-frequency motions at short wavelengths below ~30 km; an array of station-keeping gliders may meet the requirement; and an array of moorings is the most effective system among the four tested instruments for meeting the mission’s requirement. The results shown here warrant a prelaunch field campaign to further test the performance of station-keeping gliders.

Description: The authors would like to acknowledge the funding sources: the SWOT mission (JW, LF, DM); NASA Projects NNX13AE32G, NNX16AH76G, and NNX17AH54G (TF); and NNX16AH66G and NNX17AH33G (BQ). AF and MF were funded by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (which is generously supported by the W. M. Keck Foundation) through the project Science-driven Autonomous and Heterogeneous Robotic Networks: A Vision for Future Ocean Observations (http://kiss.caltech.edu/?techdev/seafloor/seafloor.html).

Description: 2018-08-07

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 1815-1830, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0275.1.

Description: Recent progress in direct numerical simulations (DNSs) of stratified turbulent flows has led to increasing attention to the validity of the constancy of the dissipation flux coefficient Γ in the Osborn’s eddy diffusivity model. Motivated by lack of observational estimates of Γ, particularly under weakly stratified deep-ocean conditions, this study estimates Γ using deep microstructure profiles collected in various regions of the North Pacific and Southern Oceans. It is shown that Γ is not constant but varies significantly with the Ozmidov/Thorpe scale ratio ROT in a fashion similar to that obtained by previous DNS studies. Efficient mixing events with Γ ~ O(1) and ROT ~ O(0.1) tend to be frequently observed in the deep ocean (i.e., weak stratification), while moderate mixing events with Γ ~ O(0.1) and ROT ~ O(1) tend to be observed in the upper ocean (i.e., strong stratification). The observed negative relationship between Γ and ROT is consistent with a simple scaling that can be derived from classical turbulence theories. In contrast, the observed results exhibit no definite relationships between Γ and the buoyancy Reynolds number Reb, although Reb has long been thought to be another key parameter that controls Γ.

Description: This study was supported by MEXT KAKENHI Grant JP15H05824 and JSPS KAKENHI Grant JP15H02131.

Description: 2019-02-15

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018):1941-1950, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0194.1.

Description: Subglacial discharges have been observed to generate buoyant plumes along the ice face of Greenland tidewater glaciers. These plumes have been traditionally modeled using classical plume theory, and their characteristic parameters (e.g., velocity) are employed in the widely used three-equation melt parameterization. However, the applicability of plume theory for three-dimensional turbulent wall plumes is questionable because of the complex near-wall plume dynamics. In this study, corrections to the classical plume theory are introduced to account for the presence of a wall. In particular, the drag and entrainment coefficients are quantified for a three-dimensional turbulent wall plume using data from direct numerical simulations. The drag coefficient is found to be an order of magnitude larger than that for a boundary layer flow over a flat plate at a similar Reynolds number. This result suggests a significant increase in the melting estimates by the current parameterization. However, the volume flux in a wall plume is found to be one-half that of a conical plume that has 2 times the buoyancy flux. This finding suggests that the total entrainment (per unit area) of ambient water is the same and that the plume scalar characteristics (i.e., temperature and salinity) can be predicted reasonably well using classical plume theory.

Description: This work was supported by the Linné FLOW Centre at KTH and the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence Programme Grant 307331 (author Ezhova) and by VR Swedish Research Council GrantVR2014-5001 (author Brandt). Support to author Cenedese was given by NSF Project OCE-1434041.

Description: 2019-02-27

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 2703-2719, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0245.1.

Description: A new set of deep float trajectory data collected in the Gulf of Mexico from 2011 to 2015 at 1500- and 2500-m depths is analyzed to describe mesoscale processes, with particular attention paid to the western Gulf. Wavelet analysis is used to identify coherent eddies in the float trajectories, leading to a census of the basinwide coherent eddy population and statistics of the eddies’ kinematic properties. The eddy census reveals a new formation region for anticyclones off the Campeche Escarpment, located northwest of the Yucatan Peninsula. These eddies appear to form locally, with no apparent direct connection to the upper layer. Once formed, the eddies drift westward along the northern edge of the Sigsbee Abyssal Gyre, located in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico over the abyssal plain. The formation mechanism and upstream sources for the Campeche Escarpment eddies are explored: the observational data suggest that eddy formation may be linked to the collision of a Loop Current eddy with the western boundary of the Gulf. Specifically, the disintegration of a deep dipole traveling under the Loop Current eddy Kraken, caused by the interaction with the northwestern continental slope, may lead to the acceleration of the abyssal gyre and the boundary current in the Bay of Campeche region.

Description: The authors were supported by the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Contract M10PC00112 to Leidos, Inc., Raleigh, North Carolina.

Description: 2019-05-07

Description: Joint US-USSR Mid-Ocean Dynamics Experiment (POLYMODE)

Description: Under grant OCE78-25612 from the Office of the International Decade of Ocean Exploration of the National Science Foundation .

Description: The New England Shelf/Slope Experiment (NESS76) was conducted from February to August in 1976 over the continental margin south of the New England coast. The initial objective of the experiment was to examine the kinematic and dynamic coupling of the low frequency oceanic motions between the outer New England shelf and the deeper slope/rise regions; and in particular, to monitor simultaneously the current, temperature, and bottom pressure fluctuations across the New England continental margin. The field program contained several components: (1) a six-month moored array to monitor current, temperature, and bottom pressure; (2) two hydrographic cruises conducted around the moored array; (3) a collection and synthesis of the synoptic meteorological data; and (4) detailed bathymetric surveys conducted around the deeper moorings. The two hydrographic cruises were conducted during May 11-21 and August 12-23 of 1976, and the initial results from the cruises have been reported elsewhere by Limeburner, Vermersch, and Beardsley (1978). Only the moored array and the meteorological data will be presented here.

Description: Prepared for the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE 76-01813, OCE 78-19513, OCE 76-2590 and OCE 76-02190.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 34 (2017): 2673-2682, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-17-0054.1.

Description: Expendable bathythermographs (XBT) to profile upper-ocean temperatures from vessels in motion have been in use for some 50 years now. Developed originally for navy use, they were soon adapted by oceanographers to map out upper-ocean thermal structure and its space–-time variability from both research vessels and merchant marine vessels in regular traffic. These activities continue today. This paper describes a new technology—the Autonomous Expendable Instrument System (AXIS)—that has been developed to provide the capability to deploy XBT probes on a predefined schedule, or adaptively in response to specific events without the presence of an observer on board. AXIS is a completely self-contained system that can hold up to 12 expendable probes [XBTs, XCTDs, expendable sound velocimeter (XSV)] in any combination. A single-board Linux computer keeps track of what probes are available, takes commands from ashore via Iridium satellite on what deployment schedule to follow, and records and forwards the probe data immediately with a time stamp and the GPS position. This paper provides a brief overview of its operation, capabilities, and some examples of how it is improving coverage along two lines in the Atlantic.

Description: Initial development of AXIS mechanical design elements wasmade possible by awards from the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Technology Innovation Fund and the Sealark Foundation to the team of Dave Fratantoni, Keith von der Heydt (WHOI), and Terry Hammar (WHOI). Construction of the first full AXIS prototype was supported by a technology grant from the National Science Foundation (OCE-0926853) and the second one through an NSF-funded (OCE-1061185) subcontract from the University of Rhode Island.

Description: 2018-06-28

Description: A ship towed log for use on ships-of-opportunity to measure ocean surface currents was built and tested over the past two years. The technique used is one of the oldest known to navigators. The ship's dead reckoned position is calculated from the speed and heading as measured by the towed log. This is then compared to the ship's true position as obtained from a reference navigation system (Loran, satellites, etc.) and the difference is attributed to the currents encountered by the ship. The system was used on six sea cruises and was successfully towed over 11,000 miles. While it i s not capable of making high precision current measurements as would be obtained from moored current meters, it can distinguish features on the order of 20 to 30 em/sec. over a large horizontal scale in the upper ocean.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-79-C-0071; NR 083-004.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 879-894, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0196.1.

Description: Models show that surface cooling over a sloping continental shelf should give rise to baroclinic instability and thus tend toward gravitationally stable density stratification. Less is known about how alongshore winds affect this process, so the role of surface momentum input is treated here by means of a sequence of idealized, primitive equation numerical model calculations. The effects of cooling rate, wind amplitude and direction, bottom slope, bottom friction, and rotation rate are all considered. All model runs lead to instability and an eddy field. While instability is not strongly affected by upwelling-favorable alongshore winds, wind-driven downwelling substantially reduces eddy kinetic energy, largely because the downwelling circulation plays a similar role to baroclinic instability by flattening isotherms and so reducing available potential energy. Not surprisingly, cross-shelf winds appear to have little effect. Analysis of the model runs leads to quantitative relations for the wind effect on eddy kinetic energy for the equilibrium density stratification (which increases as the cooling rate increases) and for eddy length scale.

Description: This research was supported by the National Science Foundation Physical Oceanography Program through Grant OCE-1433953.

Description: When current meters are used to measure mean horizontal currents in surface gravity waves, immunity to the vertical component of flow is important, even though the net vertical flow averages to zero and is normal to the desired horizontal components. A technique is presented for estimating the magnitude of the errors introduced by imperfect rejection of the off-axis flows (cross-talk) from laboratory measurements of the current meter "vertical-cosine-response." The predicted dynamic response is shown to compare favorably with laboratory measurements. The measured steady state vertical-cosine-response functions for several practical current sensors are summarized and used to estimate the magnitude of wave-induced errors in horizontal mean current measurements. A new dye technique for evaluating near-surface current meter performance in waves is shown.

Description: Prepared for the Working Con6enence on CURRENT MEASUREMENTS sponsored by the NOAA 0ffice of Ocean Engineering with the Delaware Sea Grant College Program.

Description: General information about mooring locations, durations and data gathered by the Moored Array Project (also known as Buoy Group) between late 1963 and 1978 is listed. Also included is a comprehensive list of scientific and technical publications written by the Buoy Group staff.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-76-C-0197; NR 083-400 and for the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE 77-19403 .

Description: Also published as: Journal of Marine Research 36 (1978): 725-734

Description: Relatively energetic low frequency fluctuations in horizontal currents are found to exist below the thermocline in the northern trough of the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone. For example, deep eddy kinetic energy levels there are about twice as large as those observed at similar relative depths in the MODE-I region. Eddy kinetic energies are about 2-10 times larger than mean kinetic energies. The vertical distribution of eddy kinetic energy is frequency dependent, increasing toward the thermocline for the longer time scales and intensifying toward the bottom at higher frequencies. In addition to the expected mean westward motion of Norwegian Sea Overflow Water through the northern trough of the fracture, rather consistent mean southward flow is observed at a depth immediately above the overflow.

Description: Prepared f or the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-76-C-0197; NR 083- 400.

Description: This report describes the performance of a freely-falling velocity profiler called the Absolute Velocity Profiler (AVP) . The AVP is distinguishable from our previously developed velocity profiler the Electro-Magnetic Velocity Profiler (EMVP) in that acoustic Doppler measurements are used, to determine the reference velocity for the EMVP profiles. The AVP contains the essential measurements of the motional electric currents in the sea as implemented in the EMVP and in addition, collects acoustic Doppler measurements of frequencyshifted bottom echoes. The former measurements yield a profile of the horizontal components of velocity relative to a reference velocity, independent of depth, while the latter measurements determine the absolute velocity of the AVP vehicle with respect to the sea floor. The EM profile is obtained from the sea surface to bottom, and the acoustic Doppler measurements are made within about 300 m of the sea floor. The combination of the EM and acoustic Doppler measurements yields an absolute velocity profile throughout the water column. Performance analyses included in this report set method uncertainties of between 1 and 2 cm/s r.m.s. Measurements of temperature and its gradient are also made.

Description: Prepared for the National Science Foundation, Office of the International Decade of Ocean Exploration under Grant OCE76-24605.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 48 (2018): 2209-2219, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-18-0070.1.

Description: Published observations of subinertial ocean current variability show that the vertical structure is often well described by a vertical mode that has a node of horizontal velocity at the bottom rather than the traditional node of vertical velocity. The theory of forced and free linear Rossby waves in a continuously stratified ocean with a sloping bottom and bottom friction is treated here to see if frictional effects can plausibly contribute to this phenomenon. For parameter values representative of the mesoscale, bottom dissipation by itself appears to be too weak to be an explanation, although caution is required because the present approach uses a linear model to address a nonlinear phenomenon. One novel outcome is the emergence of a short-wave, bottom-trapped, strongly damped mode that is present even with a flat bottom.

Description: Partial funding for this article is provided by the National Science Foundation Physical Oceanography section through Award OCE-1433953.

Description: 2019-03-17

Description: Also published as Journal of Geophysical Research, 83(C6), 1978, pp. 2921–2938

Description: As part of a field study of the relation between fine scale and large‐scale variations of water properties in the western North Atlantic, the waters in the vicinity of Bermuda were investigated in detail. Previous work in the area had revealed regions of intense temperature fine structure confined to the sides of the island. Generally quieter levels of activity elsewhere in the midocean have suggested that significant mixing might only occur at the solid and fluid boundaries of the ocean. During the course of our investigation, two Gulf Stream rings were found in the vicinity of the island. The exchange of water between them caused three regions of strong alongshore flow. In these three areas we find elevated levels of temperature fine structure in the upper 800 m as measured by the variance in the temperature gradient normalized by the square of the mean temperature gradient over the interval. The normalized temperature variances on small scales (0.2–1 m) are most energetic in patches tightly bound to the island sides, whereas the fine structure on larger scales (5–25 m) is also energetic away from the island in a region of outflow. Velocity profiles show that vertical scales shorten as one approaches the island, and the energy increases in the counterclockwise component. There is no correlation evident between the shear measurements of the internal wave field and the intensity of the fine structure. Possible mechanisms for the production of fine structure are explored within the context of these observations.

Description: This research was carried out with funding from the Office of Naval Research under contracts NOOOI4-74-C- 0262 NR083-004 (N .G.H. and T.B.S.) and the National Science Foundation under grant OCE74-19608 (E.J.K.).

Description: Leg VI of CHAIN 112 was scheduled from 24 June to 9 July, St. Georges, Bermuda to Woods Hole. The original plans called for the following work: Recovery of sixteen intermediate moorings at the MODE site (28° N., 69° 40'W.) Recovery of three subsurface moorings in the MODE area for the University of Rhode Island. Launching of two new intermediate moorings at the MODE site. Bathymetric and meteorological observations in the MODE area. Bathymetry at Site D. Acoustic checks of three intermediate moorings at Site D. CTDs at each mooring recovery and setting

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-66-C0241; NR 083-004.

Description: Summaries are presented of basic current, temperature and pressure measurements which were made from moored instruments as a part of the Mid-Ocean Dynamics Experiment (MODE) which took place March to July 1973. Current data are presented as Basic Statistics, Spectral Diagrams , Progressive Vector Diagrams, East vs. North Plots, and Variables vs . Time Plots.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contracts N00014-66-C-0241; NR 083-004 and N00014-76-C-0197; NR 083-400.

Description: A meeting was held March 11-15, 1980 to develop and refine the hierarchy of problems to be addressed by the high energy benthic boundary layer experiment. This document outlines revised program goals and the critical scientific tasks needed to attain those goals. Also included is an interim "state of the program" report and a critical review by the Advisory Committee.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-79-C-0071; NR 083-004.

Description: Also published as: Journal of Physical Oceanography (1979) 9: 1294-1297

Description: It is demonstrated that the outcome of an intercomparison between data and the vertical distribution of eddy kinetic energy predicted by a previously developed numerical model of the MODE area is frequency dependent. In the range of periods from 50 to 150 or even to 400 days (one definition of the temporal mesoscale, the scale that the model was designed to simulate), the comparison is quite good. For periods in the range of 5 to 50 days, the agreement is poor. For periods longer than 400 days , the comparison is indeterminate. Earlier conclusions concerning the relation of model results to the MODE data should be qualified by stipulating frequency range , and future intercomparisons for any model in all regions should be conscious of the desirability of doing so across common frequencies.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-76-C-0197; NR 083-400 and for the International Decade of Ocean Exploration Office of the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE 75-03962.

Description: Also published as: Journal of Marine Research 38 (1980): 111-133

Description: Time-averaged horizontal currents obtained from long-term moored instruments deployed in the western North Atlantic over the Sohm Abyssal Plain along 55W exhibit two segments of weakly depth-dependent flow: one, near 36N, predominantly westward and narrow or jet-like (~ 200 km wide or less); the second primarily eastward, located near 37.5N, about 200-300 km south of the mean position of the axis of the Gulf Stream (its width cannot be estimated quantitatively with the data available because only one mooring with adequate vertical coverage is clearly located in this flow regime, but an upper bound of roughly 200 km seems plausible). In both cases, long-term mean zonal currents between 600 and 4000 m depths (nominal) vary in amplitude from only 6 to 10 cm s-1 (approximately). The vertical structure of the westward recirculation varies with horizontal position, being both surface and bottom intensified. The possibility exists that the identification of these weakly depth-dependent flow regimes may point to one way of increasing the transport of the Gulf Stream. That is, flow with weak vertical shear is added offshore of the more baroclinic segment of the Stream, and possibly recirculated accordingly. This notion is generally consistent with all previous investigations which find the weakest vertical shears at the offshore edge of the Stream, wherever and however examined, and in particular with the addition of transport to the Florida Current over the Blake Plateau, after emerging from the Straits of Florida (Richardson, Schmitz, and Niiler, 1969). The horizontal patterns of the two weakly depth-dependent flow regimes found at 55W may be quite complex, containing variability on comparatively short and intermediate scales, associated to some extent with bottom topography. A specific example of the effect of bottom topography on the 55W data has been presented by Owens and Hogg (1980). It is hypothesized that the observations described here may indicate the presence of a previously unknown, weakly depth-dependent smaller scale gyre recirculating within the subtropical gyre, with the former confined between the New England Seamounts and the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. It should be emphasized that other horizontal and vertical structures may be characteristic of different locations in the recirculation of the North Atlantic. Eddy kinetic energy (Schmitz, 1978) and the off-diagonal component of Reynolds' stress are also to some extent weakly depth-dependent in each of the weakly depth-dependent mean flow regimes noted above, relative to more mid-ocean locations. At one site in particular, the off-diagonal component of the Reynolds' stress is found to be essentially depth-independent. The observation of weak depth-dependence in association with relatively strong abyssal currents for the recirculation regime could in principle help rationalize (Schmitz, 1977; Stommel, Niiler and Anati, 1978; Wunsch, 1978) some of the difficulties in geostrophica\ly balancing (at the leading order of approximation!), according to Worthington (1976), the North Atlantic Circulation in this type of region. Estimates of contributions to momentum balances (based on the available moored instrument data) involving horizontal gradients of the Reynolds' stresses, or of the momentum transport by the time-averaged flow, are typically at least an order of magnitude less than the Coriolis force associated with the zonal (or downstream) mean flow component, and possibly also the meridional (or cross-stream) flow component at most locations, thereby precluding violation of geostrophy at leading order by these effects. Geostrophic terms associated with estimates of the curvature of the Reynolds' stresses and/or mean momentum flux could be significant at the next order of approximation in the immediate vicinity of the Gulf Stream or near topographic features. Niiler (1979) has developed a model of an eddy-driven mean flow, where the eddy-terms in the vorticity equation are locally significant only in the Gulf Stream, but with a basin-wide mid-ocean flow driven in response to the noncompensated eddy-induced pressure gradient at the offshore edge of the region where eddy effects are locally significant dynamically. Two recent hydrographic sections across the Gulf Stream and recirculation along SSW were found to be in mass balance geostrophically, relative to the bottom (McCartney, Worthington and Raymer, 1980).

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-78-C-0197; NR 083-400 and for the Office of the International Decade of Ocean Exploration of the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE 75-03982.

Description: A system has been developed recently at W.H.O.I. for tracking nearsurface drogues equipped with sonobuoys using an acoustic navigation system. Surface and submerged drogues of mean depths ranging from 0.15 m to 4.88 m were tracked in the vicinity of deepwater dumpsite #106 . A least squares linear regression technique was used to determine drogue velocities over 2 hour periods. Water velocities at depths from 8 - 110 m were measured using a ship-deployed current meter coupled with acoustic tracking of the ship. The results indicated very little velocity shear in the surface mixed layer. There were two regions of _strong shear at greater depths, one associated with the main thermocline and the other presumably associated with a halocline .

Description: Prepared for the Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02-79EV10005 and NOAA under Grant 04-8-M01-62

Description: The near bottom density and velocity fields above the Hatteras abyssal plain were observed with a current/temperature measuring array and a towed-yo-yoing profiler. This report describes the array data and includes details of calibration and data quality. Sources of direction error were diagnosed from vane and compass performance and bearing direction .

Description: Prepared for the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE 76-81190 and for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-76-C-0197; NR 083-400.

Description: Also published as: Journal of Geophysical Research 85 (1980): 6654-6660

Description: An early stage of the Somali eddy circulation was mapped in the period May 29 to June 13, 1978, using expendable bathythermograph data at closely spaced stations. By this time the SW monsoon had been blowing at 5°N for about 4 weeks and the large anticyclonic eddy in the northern Somali Basin was clearly discernible between 3°N and 10°N. It is estimated that the offshore transport at this time was approximately half of that occurring during the period when the eddy reaches maximum size and strength during August and September. A smaller southern eddy was observed just offshore between the equator and 3°N.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contracts N00014-74-C-0262; NR 083-004 and N00014-79-C-0071; NR 083- 004.

Description: The purpose of this report is to discuss the use of a Neil Brown Instrument Systems internal recording CTD. The components of the instrument are described along with the advantages and disadvantages of the internal recording system. Calibration of the pressure and temperature sensors in the laboratory and the method used for in situ calibration of the conductivity sensor is described. A step by step description of the use of the CTD/IR at sea is also included.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-76-C-0197; NR 083-400 .

Description: The report presents summaries of three data sets taken at and in the vicinity of the oceanographic moorings deployed in the 1978 Joint Air-Sea Inte raction Project (JASIN). The data sets are: (1) the temperature, pressure and vertical motion records from the freely drifting Vertical Current Meters (VCMs) deployed from the ATLANTIS II, (2) the temperature data from the Aanderaa thermistor chains on W.H.O.I. mooring 653, designated as JASIN mooring W3, and (3) the expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data collected from the ATLANTIS II while participating in the JASIN Project.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-76-C-0197; NR 083- 400 and for the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE 77-25803 .

Description: During July and August of 1980 our research group measured nearsurface water velocities near the eastern coast of Lake Huron by tracking drogues using acoustic travel time and compass sighting techniques. The velocity fields appeared to consist of two components. These have been termed: a sub-current, which varied slowly with depth (compared to the deepest drogue depth of 5.2 m) and, in most cases, was apparently in geostrophic balance with the cross shore pressure gradient; and, a surface layer-current (defined by the relative velocity from deeper to shallower drogues) which decayed rapidly with depth and was directed nearly parallel with the wind and waves. There was no discernable relationship between wind speed and relative velocity. There was, however, a direct dependence of relative velocity with estimated surface roughness, suggesting that Stokes drift may have been primarily responsible for the shear. The magnitudes of the observed relative velocities were approximately equal to Stokes drift magnitudes calculated from representative wave energy spectra. Also reported are measurements of current and temperature structure made prior to and following a coastal upwelling.

Description: Prepared for the Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC02-79EV10005 and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Contract 03-5-022-26.

Description: New laboratory measurements and numeric model studies show the present folded-path ATT current meters are stable and sensitive, but are not well suited for mean flow observations in surface gravity waves. Alternate designs which reduce unwanted wake effects are proposed. ATT flowmeter history, principles of acoustic flow sensors, mean flow near cylinders, and the need for linear flow sensors are reviewed.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract Number N00014-76-C-0197; NR083-400 to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Description: In 1978, the first Keystone Conference addressed the scientific problems of sediment transport in a high energy flow such as the Western Boundary Undercurrent. Sedimentologists, physical oceanographers, geologists, optical oceanographers, biologists, and ocean engineers planned a program called the High Energy Benthic Boundary Layer Experiment (HEBBLE) to measure ocean floor bed-forms, sediment properties, turbulent flow structure, suspended sediment concentrations and fluxes, mixed layer thickness, outer scale velocity and horizontal gradients of density in a carefully surveyed site yet to be selected. While measurements were suggested, specific instruments were not identified to implement them. It was encouraging that the scientists participating in the first HEBBLE Conference wanted to continue to plan a multi-disciplinary experiment. Because of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's experience in management of planetary science experiments, autonomous instrumentation, image processing and data handling, we invited them to develop our experimental plan. Conferences were held in September at Woods Hole and November, 1978 at JPL to develop the instrumental ensemble. JPL involvement was concentrated on the extended deployment part of HEBBLE: the 6-month experiment. The March 20-23, 1979 conference brought JPL engineers and managers, HEBBLE scientists and PI's, ONR and NASA program managers together in Keystone, Colorado for presentation and discussion of the JPL program plan. This report summarizes the conference and includes reports by subcommittees of the conference on measurements and data sampling.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-74-C-0262; NR 083-004.

Description: Also published as: Journal of Physical Oceanography 9 (1979): 489-517

Description: A total of four moorings from POLYMODE array I and II were analyzed in an investigation of the interaction of wavefields and mean flow. In particular, evidence for internal wave-mean flow interaction was sought by searching for time correlations between the vertically acting Reynolds stress of the wavefield (estimated using the temperature and velocity records), and the mean shear. No significant stress-shear correlations were found at the less energetic moorings (u¯≲10 cm s−1), indicating that the magnitude of the eddy viscosity was under 200 cm2 s−1, with the sign of the energy transfer uncertain. This is considerably below the O(4500 cm2 s−1) predicted by Müller (1976). An extensive error analysis indicates that the large wave stress predicted by the theory should have been observable clearly under the conditions of measurement. At moorings typified by a higher mean velocity (u¯≈25 cm s−1), statistically significant stress-shear correlations were found, and the wavefield energy level was observed to modulate with the strength of the mean shear. The observations were consistent with generation of short (∼1 km horizontal wavelength) internal waves by the mean shear near the thermocline, resulting in an effective eddy viscosity of ∼100 cm2 s−1. Theoretical computations indicate that the wavefield “basic state” may not be independent of the mean flow as assumed by Müller (1976) but can actually be modified by large-scale vertical shear and still remain in equilibrium. In that case, the wavefield does not exchange momentum with a large-scale vertical shear flow and, excepting critical-layer effects, a small vertical eddy viscosity is to be expected. Using the Garrett-Munk (1975) model internal wave spectrum, estimates were made of the maximum momentum flux (stress) expected to be lost to critical-layer absorption. This stress was found to increase almost linearly with the velocity difference across the shear zone, corresponding to a vertical eddy viscosity of −100 cm2 s−1. Stresses indicative of this effect were not observed in the data.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-76-C-0197; NR 083-400.

Description: The W.H.O.I. portion of the MODE I array was to be installed on the first two legs of CHAIN 112, along with other work to be done at Site D. The original schedule called for the ship to leave Woods Hole on the 6th of March and return on the 20th. After a two-day layover in Woods Hole, Leg II was scheduled for 22 March through 2 April, terminating in Bermuda. Objectives of the cruises were: Setting of sixteen intermediate moorings and one surface mooring at the MODE Site (centered at 28° N., 69° 40'W.). Recovery of two MODE-Site maintenance moorings. Recovery of three intermediate moorings in the vicinity of Site D (39° 10'N., 70°00'W.). Setting of three new intermediate moorings at Site D. These were to be set by a faking-box technique, rather than the conventional method. CTDs at each new mooring. Bathymetry and meteorological observations. Gravity section, Woods Hole to MODE area and return

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-66-C0241; NR 083-004.

Description: Ten SOFAR floats were instrumented during the MODE field experiment to record pressure, temperature, and vertical water displacement during a four month drift. This report describes the acquisition and reduction of this data and then summarizes in graphical form some of the principal results.

Description: Prepared for the National Science Foundation, International Decade of Ocean Exploration Grant GX-30220

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-66-C0241; NR 083-004

Description: Also published as Journal of Physical Oceanography, Vol. 7, No. 3, May 1977, pp. 329-337

Description: Estimates of horizontal derivatives of velocity made by differencing velocity measurements are used to show that the observed velocity field due to low-frequency mesoscale motions during the preliminary MidOcean Dynamics Experiment (MODE-0) field program is horizontally nondivergent within estimated errors. The errors in horizontal derivatives of 0.15 X lQ-6 s-1 are too large for direct estimates of horizontal divergence to be made accurately. The vorticity, however, can be estimated from these horizontal derivatives with an error small compared with its magnitude. Over the measurement period of SO days, the advection of planetary vorticity balances only one-half of the local change of vorticity so these observations cannot be explained in terms of barotropic Rossby waves alone. There are indications that vortex stretching, estimated from a linear heat balance, may balance the remaining local change of vorticity as expected for baroclinic Rossby waves. Based on other measurements in this region; however, it is likely that the horizontal advection of relative vorticity is also important in the vorticity balance. A positive, but not significantly different from zero, correlation between estimates of relative vorticity and advection of planetary vorticity suggests that the ens trophy of the observed velocity field is decreasing with time. In conjunction with a similar result for the perturbation potential energy obtained in this region, this result supports the view that the MODE region is a region of decay, rather than growth, of the low-frequency mesoscale motions.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-66-C-0241; NR 083-004 and for the National Science Foundation, Office of the International Decade of Ocean Exploration under Grant ID0?5-03962.

Description: Originally issued as Reference No. 61-17, series later renamed WHOI-.

Description: A series of current measurements were made southwest of Plantagenet Bank. Bermuda from October 5-18, 1959, at various depths ranging from 5 fathoms to the bottom in water depths of from 40 to over 1000 fathoms. With the exception of the bottom measurements which were made with a camera type current meter, all the current measurements were made with parachute drogues. The magnitude of the currents ranged from 1 knot at 5 fathoms to less than 0.02 knot just off the bottom and the direction of flow was generally southeast. The somewhat erratic behavior in the movement of the drogues just south of the bank seemed to indicate turbulent flow in this region. The currents do not seem to be tidal in nature, but during the period of measurement flowed fairly consistently in one direction. perhaps indicating association with the Gulf Stream.

Description: Submitted to the Office of Naval Research Under Contract Nonr-2866(00)

Description: Laboratory, theoretical and numerical research was conducted into the structure and stability of baroclinic non-linear currents in a rotating fluid. A rotating version of the dam-break problem in which a . density current is generated after a barrier has been removed was studied. The speed of the current and its width and depth were measured by Whitehead (1981) and more extensively by Stern, Whitehead, and Lien Hua (1982), who report the experiments and compare the results to theory. Properties of a limiting bore solution for rotation density currents predicted earlier by Stern are incorporated into the above theory to predict the speed of the nose of the current. Experiments are described in which the current width is measured to be in reasonable agreement with the theory. Theoretical studies of the stability of a free isolated baroclinic jet whose free surface in cross-section intersects the water surface at two points by Griffiths, Killworth and Stern (1982) was undertaken. The waves permit the release of both kinetic and potential energy. They can have rapid growth rates, thee-folding time for waves on a current with zero potential vorticity being close to one-half of a rotation period. Experiments with a current of buoyant fluid at the free surface of a lower layer were also conducted. The current was observed to be always unstable. Killworth and Stern (1982) showed that a coastal density current in a rotating system is unstable to downstream wave disturbances when the mean potential vorticity increases towards the (vertically-walled) coast and when the mean current vanishes there. Other new instability modes were also found which do not require the potential vorticity extremum of quasi-geostrophic theory. Paldor, in his Ph.D. thesis, used Rayleigh integral to prove that an unbounded geostrophic front of uniform potential vorticity is stable with respect to small perturbations of arbitrary wavelength. Stern and Paldor (1983) used extremum concepts to analyze large amplitude disturbances in a boundary layer shear flow with an inviscid and longwave theory. It was found that initially weak horizontal convergences were concentrated and amplified in time.

Description: Prepared for the Office of Naval Research under Contract N00014-81-C-0010 and for the National Science Foundation, Ocean Science Division under Grant 0CE 80-18322.

Description: The Nantucket Shoals Flux Experiment (NSFE79) was conducted across the continental shelf and upper slope south of Nantucket from March, 1979 to April , 1980 to measure the flow of shelf water from the Georges Bank/Gulf of Maine region into the Middle Atlantic Bight. Conceived as a cooperative field experiment involving the Northeast Fisheries Center (NMFS), U.S. Geological Survey (Woods Hole), University of New Hampshire, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the experiment contained two principal components, a moored array of current meter and bottom instrumentation deployed at six locations across the shelf and upper slope spanning a depth range from 46 m to 810 m, and a series of 27 hydrographic surveys made along or near the moored array line during the experiment. A basic description of the NSFE79 hydrographic data has been given in Part 1 by Wright (1983). A description of the moored array components and the basic moored array data sets is presented here in Part 2.

Description: The NEFC participation was supported by the NMFS Marine Resources Monitoring, Assessment, and Prediction (MARt-1AP) Program. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) supported the USGS field and analysis component under t~emoranda of Understanding M550-MU6-79, M551-MU8- 24, M551-MU9-4, and M551-MU0-18. The WHO! and UNH field programs were supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants OCE 78-19513 and OCE 78-26229.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 1205-1220, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0258.1.

Description: The linkage among total exchange flow, entrainment, and diffusive salt flux in estuaries is derived analytically using salinity coordinates, revealing the simple but important relationship between total exchange flow and mixing. Mixing is defined and quantified in this paper as the dissipation of salinity variance. The method uses the conservation of volume and salt to quantify and distinguish the diahaline transport of volume (i.e., entrainment) and diahaline diffusive salt flux. A numerical model of the Hudson estuary is used as an example of the application of the method in a realistic estuary with a persistent but temporally variable exchange flow. A notable finding of this analysis is that the total exchange flow and diahaline salt flux are out of phase with respect to the spring–neap cycle. Total exchange flow reaches its maximum near minimum neap tide, but diahaline salt transport reaches its maximum during the maximum spring tide. This phase shift explains the strong temporal variation of stratification and estuarine salt content through the spring–neap cycle. In addition to quantifying temporal variation, the method reveals the spatial variation of total exchange flow, entrainment, and diffusive salt flux through the estuary. For instance, the analysis of the Hudson estuary indicates that diffusive salt flux is intensified in the wider cross sections. The method also provides a simple means of quantifying numerical mixing in ocean models because it provides an estimate of the total dissipation of salinity variance, which is the sum of mixing due to the turbulence closure and numerical mixing.

Description: T. Wang was supported by the Open Research Fund of State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research (Grant SKLEC-KF201509), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant 2017B03514), and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant XDA11010203). W. R. Geyer was supported by NSF Grant OCE 0926427 and ONR Grant N00014-16-1-2948. P. MacCready was supported by NSF Grant OCE-1634148.

Description: 2017-09-14

Description: The underway current profiling system used in this study consists of a microprocessor-controlled data logger that collects and formats data from a four-beam Ametek-Straza 300 kHz acoustic Doppler current profiler, heading from the ship's gyrocompass, and navigation information from a Loran-C receiver and a satellite navigation unit. Data are recorded on magnetic tape and some real time calculations are made. The system was first used on a May, 1981 cruise aboard the R.V. OCEANUS in the western North Atlantic. Horizontal currents were profiled to depths of 100m. Time averaging is required to remove effects of ship motion. Errors in our ability to profile ocean currents are estimated to be 5-10 em s-1 for a ten-minute vector average. An intercomparison is made with a moored vector measuring current meter (VMCM). The mean difference in hourly-averaged APOC and VMCM currents over the four-hour intercomparison is a few mm s-1. Data from a variety of oceanic regimes are presented and discussed: these regimes include two Gulf Stream crossings, a warm core ring survey, and shallow water in a frontal zone to the east of Nantucket Shoals.

Description: Prepared for NASA under Grant NAG 1-91 through NASA-Langley.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 2611-2630, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0259.1.

Description: This study reports the results of large-eddy simulations of an axisymmetric turbulent buoyant plume in a stratified fluid. The configuration used is an idealized model of the plume generated by a subglacial discharge at the base of a tidewater glacier with an ambient stratification typical of Greenland fjords. The plume is discharged from a round source of various diameters and characteristic stratifications for summer and winter are considered. The classical theory for the integral parameters of a turbulent plume in a homogeneous fluid gives accurate predictions in the weakly stratified lower layer up to the pycnocline, and the plume dynamics are not sensitive to changes in the source diameter. In winter, when the stratification is similar to an idealized two-layer case, turbulent entrainment and generation of internal waves by the plume top are in agreement with the theoretical and numerical results obtained for turbulent jets in a two-layer stratification. In summer, instead, the stratification is more complex and turbulent entrainment by the plume top is significantly reduced. The subsurface layer in summer is characterized by a strong density gradient and the oscillating plume generates internal waves that might serve as an indicator of submerged plumes not penetrating to the surface.

Description: This work was supported by Linné FLOW Centre at KTH and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence program (Grant 307331) (E. E.) and VR Swedish Research Council, Outstanding Young Researcher Award, Grant VR 2014-5001 (L. B.). Support to C. C. was given by the NSF Project OCE-1434041.

Description: 2018-04-26

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 2479-2498, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-16-0167.1.

Description: The generation of trapped and radiating internal tides around Izu‐Oshima Island located off Sagami Bay, Japan, is investigated using the three-dimensional Stanford Unstructured Nonhydrostatic Terrain-following Adaptive Navier–Stokes Simulator (SUNTANS) that is validated with observations of isotherm displacements in shallow water. The model is forced by barotropic tides, which generate strong baroclinic internal tides in the study region. Model results showed that when diurnal K1 barotropic tides dominate, resonance of a trapped internal Kelvin wave leads to large-amplitude internal tides in shallow waters on the coast. This resonance produces diurnal motions that are much stronger than the semidiurnal motions. The weaker, freely propagating, semidiurnal internal tides are generated on the western side of the island, where the M2 internal tide beam angle matches the topographic slope. The internal wave energy flux due to the diurnal internal tides is much higher than that of the semidiurnal tides in the study region. Although the diurnal internal tide energy is trapped, this study shows that steepening of the Kelvin waves produces high-frequency internal tides that radiate from the island, thus acting as a mechanism to extract energy from the diurnal motions.

Description: This study was supported by JST CREST Grant Number JPRMJCR12A6.

Description: 2018-04-12

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 2531-2543, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-17-0051.1.

Description: Argo floats are used to investigate Labrador Sea overturning and its variability on seasonal time scales. This is the first application of Argo floats to estimate overturning in a deep-water formation region in the North Atlantic. Unlike hydrographic measurements, which are typically confined to the summer season, floats offer the advantage of collecting data in all seasons. Seasonal composite potential density and absolute geostrophic velocity sections across the mouth of the Labrador Sea assembled from float profiles and trajectories at 1000 m are used to calculate the horizontal and overturning circulations. The overturning exhibits a pronounced seasonal cycle; in depth space the overturning doubles throughout the course of the year, and in density space it triples. The largest overturning [1.2 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) in depth space and 3.9 Sv in density space] occurs in spring and corresponds to the outflow of recently formed Labrador Sea Water. The overturning decreases through summer and reaches a minimum in winter (0.6 Sv in depth space and 1.2 Sv in density space). The robustness of the Argo seasonal overturning is supported by a comparison to an overturning estimate based on hydrographic data from the AR7W line.

Description: NSF OCE-1459474 supported this work.

Description: 2018-04-17

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 47 (2017): 85-100, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0234.1.

Description: Observations and analyses of two tidally recurring, oblique, internal hydraulic jumps at a stratified estuary mouth (Columbia River, Oregon/Washington) are presented. These hydraulic features have not previously been studied due to the challenges of both horizontally resolving the sharp gradients and temporally resolving their evolution in numerical models and traditional observation platforms. The jumps, both of which recurred during ebb, formed adjacent to two engineered lateral channel constrictions and were identified in marine radar image time series. Jump occurrence was corroborated by (i) a collocated sharp gradient in the surface currents measured via airborne along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radar and (ii) the transition from supercritical to subcritical flow in the cross-jump direction via shipborne velocity and density measurements. Using a two-layer approximation, observed jump angles at both lateral constrictions are shown to lie within the theoretical bounds given by the critical internal long-wave (Froude) angle and the arrested maximum-amplitude internal bore angle, respectively. Also, intratidal and intertidal variability of the jump angles are shown to be consistent with that expected from the two-layer model, applied to varying stratification and current speed over a range of tidal and river discharge conditions. Intratidal variability of the upchannel jump angle is similar under all observed conditions, whereas the downchannel jump angle shows an additional association with stratification and ebb velocity during the low discharge periods. The observations additionally indicate that the upchannel jump achieves a stable position that is collocated with a similarly oblique bathymetric slope.

Description: We acknowledge the financial support of the Office of Naval Research under Awards N00014-10-1-0932 and N00014-13-1-0364.

Description: 2017-07-04

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 33 (2016): 2185-2203, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0095.1.

Description: This study presents amended procedures to process and map data collected by pressure-sensor-equipped inverted echo sounders (PIESs) in western boundary current regions. The modifications to the existing methodology, applied to observations of the Kuroshio from a PIES array deployed northeast of Luzon, Philippines, consist of substituting a hydrography-based mean travel time field for the PIES-based mean field and using two distinct gravest empirical mode (GEM) lookup tables across the front that separate water masses of South China Sea and North Pacific origin. In addition, this study presents a method to use time-mean velocities from acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) to reference (or “level”) the PIES-recorded pressures in order to obtain time series of absolute geostrophic velocity. Results derived from the PIES observations processed with the hydrography-based mean field and two GEMs are compared with hydrographic profiles sampled by Seagliders during the PIES observation period and with current velocity measured concurrently by a collocated ADCP array. The updated processing scheme leads to a 41% error decrease in the determination of the thermocline depth across the current, a 22% error decrease in baroclinic current velocity shear, and a 61% error decrease in baroclinic volume transports. The absolute volume transport time series derived from the leveled PIES array compares well with that obtained directly from the ADCPs with a root-mean-square difference of 3.0 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s–1), which is mainly attributed to the influence of ageostrophic processes on the ADCP-measured velocities that cannot be calculated from the PIES observations.

Description: The authors are supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Departmental Research Initiative entitled Origins of the Kuroshio and Mindanao Currents (ONR Grant N00014-10-1-0397). MA was supported by ONR Grants N00014-15-12593 and N00014-16-1-2668. CL was supported by ONR Grant N00014-10-0308. SJ was supported by MOST Grants NSC 101-2611-M-002-018-MY3, MOST 103-2611-M-002-011, and MOST 105-2119-M-002-042.

Description: 2017-04-05

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 34 (2017): 1713-1721, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-16-0258.1.

Description: Data collected with acoustic Doppler current profilers installed on CTD rosettes and lowered through the water column [lowered ADCP (LADCP) systems] are routinely used to derive full-depth profiles of ocean velocity. In addition to the uncertainties arising from random noise in the along-beam velocity measurements, LADCP-derived velocities are commonly contaminated by bias errors due to imperfectly measured instrument attitude (heading, pitch, and roll). Of particular concern are the heading measurements, because it is not usually feasible to calibrate the internal ADCP compasses with the instruments installed on a CTD rosette, away from the magnetic disturbances of the ship. Heading data from dual-headed LADCP systems, which consist of upward- and downward-pointing ADCPs installed on the same rosette, commonly indicate heading-dependent compass errors with amplitudes exceeding 10°. In an attempt to reduce LADCP velocity errors, several dozen profiles of simultaneous LADCP and magnetometer/accelerometer data were collected in the Gulf of Mexico. Agreement between the LADCP profiles and simultaneous shipboard velocity measurements improves significantly when the former are processed with external attitude measurements. Another set of LADCP profiles with external attitude data was collected in a region of the Arctic Ocean where the horizontal geomagnetic field is too weak for the ADCP compasses to work reliably. Good agreement between shipboard velocity measurements and Arctic LADCP profiles collected at magnetic dip angles exceeding and processed with external attitude measurements indicate that high-quality velocity profiles can be obtained close to the magnetic poles.

Description: Part of this research was made possible by a grant from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to support the Ecosystem Impacts of Oil and Gas Inputs to the Gulf (ECOGIG-2) research consortium. Funding for acquisition of the 2015 Arctic data was provided by NSF (1203473 and 1249133) and NOAA (NA15OAR4310155) under the NABOS-II program.

Description: The Bedford Institute of Oceanography, E.G.&G., National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have conducted separate moored array experiments during 1974- 1980 to study various aspects of the regional circulation in the Gulf of Maine and adjacent Scotian and New England shelf and slope regions. The mean currents and current variances measured in these experiments are summarized here in tabular and graphical form, together with other information about each experiment. While there have been few measurements made in the interior of the Gulf of Maine, the map of mean subsurface currents demonstrate (a) a net inflow of Scotian shelf water past Cape Sable into the Gulf, (b) a net inflow of slope water through the Northeast Channel into the Gulf, (c) a partially closed anticyclonic circulation around Georges Bank, and (d) a net outflow of shelf water south of Nantucket from the Gulf of Maine into the New England shelf.

Description: Funding was provided by the Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management under Contract AA 551-MU0-18 and by the National Science Foundation under Grant OCE 80-14941.

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 3011-3029, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0248.1.

Description: Seasonal variability of the tropical Atlantic circulation is dominated by the annual cycle, but semiannual variability is also pronounced, despite weak forcing at that period. This study uses multiyear, full-depth velocity measurements from the central equatorial Atlantic to analyze the vertical structure of annual and semiannual variations of zonal velocity. A baroclinic modal decomposition finds that the annual cycle is dominated by the fourth mode and the semiannual cycle is dominated by the second mode. Similar local behavior is found in a high-resolution general circulation model. This simulation reveals that the annual and semiannual cycles of the respective dominant baroclinic modes are associated with characteristic basinwide structures. Using an idealized, linear, reduced-gravity model to simulate the dynamics of individual baroclinic modes, it is shown that the observed circulation variability can be explained by resonant equatorial basin modes. Corollary simulations of the reduced-gravity model with varying basin geometry (i.e., square basin vs realistic coastlines) or forcing (i.e., spatially uniform vs spatially variable wind) show a structural robustness of the simulated basin modes. A main focus of this study is the seasonal variability of the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC) as identified in recent observational studies. Main characteristics of the observed EUC including seasonal variability of transport, core depth, and maximum core velocity can be explained by the linear superposition of the dominant equatorial basin modes as obtained from the reduced-gravity model.

Description: This study was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft as part of the Sonderforschungsbereich 754 (SFB754) ‘‘Climate–Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean’’ and through several research cruises with R/V Meteor, R/V Maria S. Merian, andR/VL’Atalante by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of the cooperative projects RACE (03F0605B) and SACUS (03G0837A) and by European Union 7th Framework Programme (FP7 2007–13) under Grant Agreement 603521 PREFACE project.