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(7), (2022): 1333-1350, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0298.1.

Description: Idealized numerical simulations were conducted to investigate the influence of channel curvature on estuarine stratification and mixing. Stratification is decreased and tidal energy dissipation is increased in sinuous estuaries compared to straight channel estuaries. We applied a vertical salinity variance budget to quantify the influence of straining and mixing on stratification. Secondary circulation due to the channel curvature is found to affect stratification in sinuous channels through both lateral straining and enhanced vertical mixing. Alternating negative and positive lateral straining occur in meanders upstream and downstream of the bend apex, respectively, corresponding to the normal and reversed secondary circulation with curvature. The vertical mixing is locally enhanced in curved channels with the maximum mixing located upstream of the bend apex. Bend-scale bottom salinity fronts are generated near the inner bank upstream of the bend apex as a result of interaction between the secondary flow and stratification. Shear mixing at bottom fronts, instead of overturning mixing by the secondary circulation, provides the dominant mechanism for destruction of stratification. Channel curvature can also lead to increased drag, and using a Simpson number with this increased drag coefficient can relate the decrease in stratification with curvature to the broader estuarine parameter space.

Description: The research leading to these results was funded by NSF Awards OCE-1634481 and OCE-2123002.

Description: 2022-12-09

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(2), (2020): 415-437, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0019.1.

Description: Results are presented from two dye release experiments conducted in the seasonal thermocline of the Sargasso Sea, one in a region of low horizontal strain rate (~10−6 s−1), the second in a region of intermediate horizontal strain rate (~10−5 s−1). Both experiments lasted ~6 days, covering spatial scales of 1–10 and 1–50 km for the low and intermediate strain rate regimes, respectively. Diapycnal diffusivities estimated from the two experiments were κz = (2–5) × 10−6 m2 s−1, while isopycnal diffusivities were κH = (0.2–3) m2 s−1, with the range in κH being less a reflection of site-to-site variability, and more due to uncertainties in the background strain rate acting on the patch combined with uncertain time dependence. The Site I (low strain) experiment exhibited minimal stretching, elongating to approximately 10 km over 6 days while maintaining a width of ~5 km, and with a notable vertical tilt in the meridional direction. By contrast, the Site II (intermediate strain) experiment exhibited significant stretching, elongating to more than 50 km in length and advecting more than 150 km while still maintaining a width of order 3–5 km. Early surveys from both experiments showed patchy distributions indicative of small-scale stirring at scales of order a few hundred meters. Later surveys show relatively smooth, coherent distributions with only occasional patchiness, suggestive of a diffusive rather than stirring process at the scales of the now larger patches. Together the two experiments provide important clues as to the rates and underlying processes driving diapycnal and isopycnal mixing at these scales.

Description: Results are presented from two dye release experiments conducted in the seasonal thermocline of the Sargasso Sea, one in a region of low horizontal strain rate (~10−6 s−1), the second in a region of intermediate horizontal strain rate (~10−5 s−1). Both experiments lasted ~6 days, covering spatial scales of 1–10 and 1–50 km for the low and intermediate strain rate regimes, respectively. Diapycnal diffusivities estimated from the two experiments were κz = (2–5) × 10−6 m2 s−1, while isopycnal diffusivities were κH = (0.2–3) m2 s−1, with the range in κH being less a reflection of site-to-site variability, and more due to uncertainties in the background strain rate acting on the patch combined with uncertain time dependence. The Site I (low strain) experiment exhibited minimal stretching, elongating to approximately 10 km over 6 days while maintaining a width of ~5 km, and with a notable vertical tilt in the meridional direction. By contrast, the Site II (intermediate strain) experiment exhibited significant stretching, elongating to more than 50 km in length and advecting more than 150 km while still maintaining a width of order 3–5 km. Early surveys from both experiments showed patchy distributions indicative of small-scale stirring at scales of order a few hundred meters. Later surveys show relatively smooth, coherent distributions with only occasional patchiness, suggestive of a diffusive rather than stirring process at the scales of the now larger patches. Together the two experiments provide important clues as to the rates and underlying processes driving diapycnal and isopycnal mixing at these scales.

Description: 2020-08-06

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 the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 37(5), (2020): 789-806, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-18-0244.1.

Description: Realistic ocean state prediction and its validation rely on the availability of high quality in situ observations. To detect data errors, adequate quality check procedures must be designed. This paper presents procedures that take advantage of the ever-growing observation databases that provide climatological knowledge of the ocean variability in the neighborhood of an observation location. Local validity intervals are used to estimate binarily whether the observed values are considered as good or erroneous. Whereas a classical approach estimates validity bounds from first- and second-order moments of the climatological parameter distribution, that is, mean and variance, this work proposes to infer them directly from minimum and maximum observed values. Such an approach avoids any assumption of the parameter distribution such as unimodality, symmetry around the mean, peakedness, or homogeneous distribution tail height relative to distribution peak. To reach adequate statistical robustness, an extensive manual quality control of the reference dataset is critical. Once the data have been quality checked, the local minima and maxima reference fields are derived and the method is compared with the classical mean/variance-based approach. Performance is assessed in terms of statistics of good and bad detections. It is shown that the present size of the reference datasets allows the parameter estimates to reach a satisfactory robustness level to always make the method more efficient than the classical one. As expected, insufficient robustness persists in areas with an especially low number of samples and high variability.

Description: This study has been conducted using EU Copernicus Marine Service Information and was supported by the European Union within the EU Copernicus Marine Service In Situ phase-I and phase-II contracts led by Ifremer. The publication was also supported by SOERE CTDO2 in France. The Argo data were collected and made freely available by the International Argo Program and the national programs that contribute to it (see http://www.argo.ucsd.edu, http://argo.jcommops.org). The Argo Program is part of the Global Ocean Observing System (http://doi.org/10.17882/42182). The marine mammal data were collected and made freely available by the International MEOP Consortium and the national programs that contribute to it (see http://www.meop.net; https://doi.org/10.17882/45461). Aleix Gelabert and Dídac Costa were the skippers of the OPOO, sponsored by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (UNESCO) and Pharmaton. The BWR is a periodic oceanic race organized by the Fundació Navegació Oceànica de Barcelona (FNOB). Reviewer D. Briand provided some useful comments on the final version of the draft paper before submission.

Description: 2020-11-04

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(5), (2020): 1245-1263, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0213.1.

Description: We use laboratory experiments and theoretical modeling to investigate the surface expression of a subglacial discharge plume, as occurs at many fjords around Greenland. The experiments consider a fountain that is released vertically into a homogeneous fluid, adjacent either to a vertical or a sloping wall, that then spreads horizontally at the free surface before sinking back to the bottom. We present a model that separates the fountain into two separate regions: a vertical fountain and a horizontal, negatively buoyant jet. The model is compared to laboratory experiments that are conducted over a range of volume fluxes, density differences, and ambient fluid depths. It is shown that the nondimensionalized length, width, and aspect ratio of the surface expression are dependent on the Froude number, calculated at the start of the negatively buoyant jet. The model is applied to observations of the surface expression from a Greenland subglacial discharge plume. In the case where the discharge plume reaches the surface with negative buoyancy the model can be used to estimate the discharge properties at the base of the glacier.

Description: We gratefully acknowledge technical assistance from Anders Jensen and thank anonymous reviewers for improving the clarity of the manuscript. CM thanks the Weston Howard Jr. Scholarship for funding. Support to CC was given by NSF project OCE-1434041 and OCE-1658079.

Description: 2020-10-27

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: 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(11), (2020): 3267–3294, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-19-0310.1.

Description: As part of the Flow Encountering Abrupt Topography (FLEAT) program, an array of pressure-sensor equipped inverted echo sounders (PIESs) was deployed north of Palau where the westward-flowing North Equatorial Current encounters the southern end of the Kyushu–Palau Ridge in the tropical North Pacific. Capitalizing on concurrent observations from satellite altimetry, FLEAT Spray gliders, and shipboard hydrography, the PIESs’ 10-month duration hourly bottom pressure p and round-trip acoustic travel time τ records are used to examine the magnitude and predictability of sea level and pycnocline depth changes and to track signal propagations through the array. Sea level and pycnocline depth are found to vary in response to a range of ocean processes, with their magnitude and predictability strongly process dependent. Signals characterized here comprise the barotropic tides, semidiurnal and diurnal internal tides, southeastward-propagating superinertial waves, westward-propagating mesoscale eddies, and a strong signature of sea level increase and pycnocline deepening associated with the region’s relaxation from El Niño to La Niña conditions. The presence of a broad band of superinertial waves just above the inertial frequency was unexpected and the FLEAT observations and output from a numerical model suggest that these waves detected near Palau are forced by remote winds east of the Philippines. The PIES-based estimates of pycnocline displacement are found to have large uncertainties relative to overall variability in pycnocline depth, as localized deep current variations arising from interactions of the large-scale currents with the abrupt topography around Palau have significant travel time variability.

Description: Support for this research was provided by Office of Naval Research Grants N00014-16-1-2668, N00014-18-1-2406, N00014-15-1-2488, and N00014-15-1-2622. R.C.M. was additionally supported by the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, with funding provided by the Weston Howland Jr. Postdoctoral Scholarship.

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(11),(2020): 3331–3351, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0035.1.

Description: This study examines the generation of warm spiral structures (referred to as spiral streamers here) over Gulf Stream warm-core rings. Satellite sea surface temperature imagery shows spiral streamers forming after warmer water from the Gulf Stream or newly formed warm-core rings impinges onto old warm-core rings and then intrudes into the old rings. Field measurements in April 2018 capture the vertical structure of a warm spiral streamer as a shallow lens of low-density water winding over an old ring. Observations also show subduction on both sides of the spiral streamer, which carries surface waters downward. Idealized numerical model simulations initialized with observed water-mass densities reproduce spiral streamers over warm-core rings and reveal that their formation is a nonlinear submesoscale process forced by mesoscale dynamics. The negative density anomaly of the intruding water causes a density front at the interface between the intruding water and surface ring water, which, through thermal wind balance, drives a local anticyclonic flow. The pressure gradient and momentum advection of the local interfacial flow push the intruding water toward the ring center. The large-scale anticyclonic flow of the ring and the radial motion of the intruding water together form the spiral streamer. The observed subduction on both sides of the spiral streamer is part of the secondary cross-streamer circulation resulting from frontogenesis on the stretching streamer edges. The surface divergence of the secondary circulation pushes the side edges of the streamer away from each other, widens the warm spiral on the surface, and thus enhances its surface signal.

Description: Authors W. G. Zhang and D. J. McGillicuddy are both supported by the National Science Foundation through Grant OCE 1657803.

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(4), (2022): 597–616, https://doi.org/10.1175/jpo-d-21-0121.1.

Description: We provide a first-principles analysis of the energy fluxes in the oceanic internal wave field. The resulting formula is remarkably similar to the renowned phenomenological formula for the turbulent dissipation rate in the ocean, which is known as the finescale parameterization. The prediction is based on the wave turbulence theory of internal gravity waves and on a new methodology devised for the computation of the associated energy fluxes. In the standard spectral representation of the wave energy density, in the two-dimensional vertical wavenumber–frequency (m–ω) domain, the energy fluxes associated with the steady state are found to be directed downscale in both coordinates, closely matching the finescale parameterization formula in functional form and in magnitude. These energy transfers are composed of a “local” and a “scale-separated” contributions; while the former is quantified numerically, the latter is dominated by the induced diffusion process and is amenable to analytical treatment. Contrary to previous results indicating an inverse energy cascade from high frequency to low, at odds with observations, our analysis of all nonzero coefficients of the diffusion tensor predicts a direct energy cascade. Moreover, by the same analysis fundamental spectra that had been deemed “no-flux” solutions are reinstated to the status of “constant-downscale-flux” solutions. This is consequential for an understanding of energy fluxes, sources, and sinks that fits in the observational paradigm of the finescale parameterization, solving at once two long-standing paradoxes that had earned the name of “oceanic ultraviolet catastrophe.”

Description: The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the ONR Grant N00014-17-1-2852. YL gratefully acknowledges support from NSF DMS Award 2009418.

Description: 2022-09-25

Description: Flyer for the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS)

Description: Australian Government

Description: OPENASFA INPUT

Description: Published

Description: Non Refereed

Description: This document has been prepared by Laura Kong, Director International tsunami Information Centre (ITIC). The Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme is an international community-based recognition programme developed by UNESCO/IOC. It aims to build resilient communities through awareness and preparedness strategies that will protect life, livelihoods and property from tsunamis in different regions. In June 2021, the IOC Assembly through IOC Decision A-31/3.4.1 (Warning Mitigation Systems for Ocean Hazards) approved the establishment of the IOC Ocean Decade Tsunami Programme, with the aim of making 100% of communities at risk of tsunami prepared for and resilient to tsunamis by 2030 through the implementation of the UNESCO/IOC Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme and other initiatives. The implementation of the Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme will be a key contribution to achieving the societal outcome ‘A Safe Ocean’ of the Ocean Decade. This document presents the main features of a UNESCO/IOC Tsunami Ready Programme. It is presented to the TT DMP for discussion and approval for recommendation to the TOWS-WG-XV, for the establishment of the programme.

Description: OPENASFA INPUT Working Document from the Meeting of the Inter-ICG Task Team on Disaster Management and Preparedness held online on 21-22 February 2022, Proposal for endorsement by IOC.

Description: Published

Description: Not Known

Description: Six years after the First International Conference on “Water, Megacities and Global Change”, held on the occasion of the 21st United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 21), which drew attention to the significant challenges megacities are facing, and proposed the creation of the Megacities Alliance on Water and Climate (MAWAC), UNESCO’s Division of Water Sciences and ARCEAU-IdF1 decided to join forces once again to co-organize the Second International Conference on Water, Megacities and Global Change (EauMega) at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France and online on a dedicated platform for the conference, on 11-14 January 2022. Organized in close collaboration with the Greater Paris Metropolis and the Greater Paris Sanitation Authority (SIAAP), and with the support of many other public and private partners, this conference builds on the results of the online Pre-Conference on Water, Megacities and Global Change, which took place in December 2020. The Pre-Conference event, which brought together more than 6,000 participants, helped the organizers identify the issues requiring further consideration during the Second International Conference on Water, Megacities and Global Change by selected scientists, water operators, decision-makers, representatives of basin authorities and civil society at large. Given their size, the challenges posed to Megacities by water management within the context of climate change are of particular importance. Indeed, they raise new and specific issues that require close collaboration between scientists who advance knowledge, operators and basin authorities (public and private) who innovate technically and socio-politically, and local decision-makers who can support new, just and more efficient models of water governance, while remaining in constant interaction with civil society. Following a Call for Papers launched in late 2019, this publication is a compilation of the best scientific articles selected and peer-reviewed by the 87 international experts responsible for designing the scientific programme of the conference. Reflecting the structure of the conference with its 12 thematic sessions, the Proceedings present all the peer-reviewed articles in the following thematic chapters: • Disaster Risk Reduction; • Sustainable Development Goals & Service continuity; • Knowledge of the technical and social conditions; • Governance modalities in megacities; • Holistic water management; • Land issues and challenges; • Planning tools. • Technical and technological solutions; • Innovative initiatives at governance, technical, institutional or social level; • New water culture; • Strengthening of sustainable solidarity; The publication not only provides a state of the art on the challenges that Megacities are facing in their management of water and of the new global changes they encounter, but also presents the latest innovative and multi-disciplinary solutions being used to overcome these challenges and ensure optimal and sustainable resource management. By compiling a collection of experiences and best practices at global level, integrating the following three aspects – megacities, water and global change including climate change – it is our hope that this publication will represent a source of inspiration for other Megacities and large urban centers to overcome similar challenges and strengthen their climate resilience. By promoting fruitful exchanges and synergies among megacities, research institutions, the private sector and civil society at large, as well as inspiring further joint research studies on climate change and water-security related issues, the conference represents without doubt a fundamental building block of the Megacities Alliance on Water and Climate (MAWAC). On behalf of the Conference organizers, we wish to thank the co-conveners and partners of this second major international Conference on Water, Megacities and Global Change, as well as all the authors for their valuable contribution and their recommendations.

Description: Published

Description: Refereed

Description: It is our great pleasure to present the second volume of the Catalogue of Hydrologic Analysis for Asia and the Pacific. This volume focuses on the topic “Dam reservoir operation for addressing water related disasters, water scarcity and quality in Asia and the Pacific”. It contains seven documents from China, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, and Viet Nam. It is the outcome of the international cooperation of the member countries of the Regional Steering Committee for Asia and the Pacific (RSC) under the auspices of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Hydrological Program Phase VIII (IHP-VIII, 2014-2021). It follows the 2020 publication of the Catalogue of Hydrologic Analysis (CHA) Volume 1. The objectives of the publication of the Catalogue of Hydrologic Analysis are: • To promote mutual understanding of hydrology and water resources of the region and of the neighboring countries. • To promote information exchange among different organizations in each country. • To share information on water-related issues such as disaster preparedness, water environment conservation, and water resources management in Asia and the Pacific. In Asia and the Pacific, various hydrologic analysis methods have been applied for designing hydraulic structures and river improvement works for rainfall-runoff predictions, flood inundation mapping and other purposes. These hydrologic analysis methods and experiences have different characteristics in terms of climate, topography, and development history of the catchments in which they are applied. Developing a platform to share these experiences and hydrologic analysis methods strengthen risk estimation and water-related hazard damage reduction; especially for researchers and engineers in the region who have limited knowledge of and experiences with them. To improve this situation and enhance risk estimation ability in research and engineering communities, meetings of the IHP Regional Steering Committee for Asia and the Pacific (RSC-AP) discussed the formation of a research team and the development of a hydro-informatics platform for Asia and the Pacific with the objective of realizing a hydro-hazard resilient region. With the objective enhancing regional capacity for evaluating water-related disaster risks, the RSC-AP decided to develop a Catalogue of Hydrologic Analysis (CHA) as a collaboration among researchers and engineers in Asia and the Pacific. The Catalogue collects documents including experiences and hydrologic analysis methods from practical use to advanced studies for short-term rainfall prediction, rainfall-runoff prediction, flood inundation mapping, hydrologic frequency analysis, eco-hydrology, and more. In this volume, we focus on dam reservoir operation in Asia and the Pacific. Since ancient times, dam reservoirs have aimed at securing water resources for living and agricultural production. Since then, industrial use and hydroelectric power generation were added – and most recently, securing the water environment and mitigating damage caused by floods. Dam operation methods are being studied and operated in each country to meet different objectives and to reduce the impact of flow control on the natural environment. This report summarizes the operation and water resource management of dams in China, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, and Viet Nam. By developing and sharing knowledge through CHA, RSC-AP provides a platform to improve the ability for evaluating water-related disaster risks, which in turn will strengthen cooperation among researchers, governmental agencies and private sectors; serve to reduce the damage of water-related disasters; and stand as a regional contribution to achieve the targets of SDGs, UNESCO IHP-VIII (2014-2021) and UNESCO IHP-IX (2022-2029).

Description: The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan, which provides funds to support UNESCO IHP activities in Asia and the Pacific

Description: From the People of Japan

Description: OPENASFA INPUT

Description: Published

Description: Not Known

Description: The Tenth Meeting of the Working Group on Tsunamis and Other Hazards Related to Sea-Level Warning and Mitigation Systems (TOWS-WG-X) was held in Paris, France, on 23-24 February 2017 under the Chairmanship of Mr Alexander Postnov (IOC Vice-Chair). The meeting evaluated progress in actions and decisions taken by the Governing Bodies through IOC-XXVIII/Dec. 8.2 and IOC EC-XLIX/3.4. The Group reviewed reports by the IOC Intergovernmental Coordination Groups as well as its own Task Teams on Disaster Management and Preparedness and Watch Operations. The Group noted with satisfaction the progress made during the intersessional period, including: - Three exercises carried out (CARIBEWave 2016, IOWAVE 2016, PACWAVE 2017) and regular communication tests - Accreditation of four Tsunami Service Providers in the North-Eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and Connected Seas Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (NEAMTWS) - With regards to Tsunami Evacuation Mapping: a) The PTWS successfully completed a Pilot Tsunami Evacuation Maps, Plans and Procedures (TEMPP) over two years in Honduras with regional participation b) The ITIC, CTWP & IOC-UNESCO programme CARIBE EWS built experience with regards to implementation of the TEMPP and are ready to provide guidance to countries that want to implement similar projects c) The Project identified and references existing best practice evacuation mapping guidelines that countries have developed d) The PTWS will finalise project documentation and make it available to ICGs, noting the interest of IOTWMS and CARIBE-EWS  Tsunami Ready Community based performance recognition program achieved in St. Kitts & Nevis and Cedeño (Honduras)  The progress made by DBCP in developing an educational strategy to address buoy vandalism and endorse the development of the strategy and recommend that each ICG review the strategy The Group recommended the Assembly to encourage Member States to - sustain and increase technical and financial support of the tsunami warning systems in their respective regions - further promote tsunami awareness in communities and among authorities through communication and tsunami wave exercises, training, information, and community preparedness and recognition programmes - share Tsunami source scenario data as well sea level data relevant to tsunami detection and alerts - densify sea level networks particularly nearby tsunamigenic sources - extend exercises to community level and include critical infrastructure in exercises (e.g. hospitals, fire stations, police stations, electric power plants, airports, ports and harbors) The Group recommended the Assembly to instruct ICGs - to consider piloting the CARIBE EWS Tsunami Ready guidelines and report back to the TOWS-XI with a view to develop harmonized consistent global guidelines - to advocate the UN designated World Tsunami Awareness Day (5 November) among member states and advise them of the availability of material from the UNISDR in this regard, and share activities and materials with UNISDR and TICs - to recommend TSPs and NTWCs to also use the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) to facilitate warning messages to be consistently disseminated simultaneously over many warning communication systems to many applications - to recommend TSPs and NTWCs register with international register of alerting authorities through WMO National Permanent Representative - to consider contributing any education or outreach materials related to data buoy vandalism to the DBCP for inclusion in a tool kit of regionally relevant materials to counter vandalism - the ICG/PTWS, in line with the IOC XXVII Assembly decision 8.2, to continue its work on the Key Performance Indicators to cover all aspects of the Tsunami Warning and Mitigation Systems, aligning as closely as possible with the Sendai Framework, and share it to the other ICGs for consideration by the Member States, and report back to TOWS XI with a view to establish global KPIs - to encourage NTWCs disseminate tsunami bulletins to ports, harbours and other maritime authorities within their countries - to share the results of Tsunami exercises and communication tests with WMO to facilitate improved performance of WMO related communication systems The Group recommended the Assembly to take the following actions - to conduct a symposium in early 2018 in Paris on enhancing existing TSP and NTWC operational tsunami forecasting to further develop warning products and enhancing timely, accurate, reliable and effective decision-making and community response, involving experts from monitoring networks, seismology, tsunami forecast modelling and warning centres, maritime authorities, and national and local emergency management authorities with advice on product requirements - to extend the tenure of TOWS and its Task Teams on (i) Disaster Management and Preparedness and (ii) Tsunami Watch Operations, with ToRs as given in IOC Resolution XXIV-4 [for TOWS-WG] and IOC/TOWS-WG-VI/3 [Annex II; for TTDMP] and ToRs for TTTWO to reflect work related to enhancements to the accuracy and effectiveness of tsunami forecast information for users The Group accepted the reports from the Task Teams on Disaster Management and Preparedness and Watch Operations and instructed the Task Team on Watch Operations - to develop in consultation with WWNWS-SC specific tsunami threat messages for vessels at sea - to consider tsunamis generated by non-seismic sources for integration into Tsunami watch operation The Group noted the information presented by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on the new developments on the WMO Information System and its use for dissemination of Tsunami alerts as well as WIS performance monitoring of messages and particular types of messages. The Group recommended WMO to explore rendering assistance to CARIBE-EWS concerning usage of GTS and WIS for dissemination of tsunami alerts in the Caribbean region. The Group recognized that the current financial situation strongly limits the implementation of the tasks of the Group, ICGs and Inter-ICG Task Teams and recommended that the Member States to increase their extra-budgetary contributions to the IOC to provide the needed resources for the priorities identified by TOWS-WG and ICGs.

Description: Published

Description: Non Refereed

Description: Dr Nasser Hadjizadeh Zaker, Director of the Iranian National Institute for Oceanography and Atmospheric Science (INIOAS) and Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWMS) sub-regional working group for the North West Indian Ocean (WG-NWIO) welcomed all the participants to the meeting. He mentioned that it is very important to pay attention to the risk of tsunami to the countries of the NWIO from the Makran subduction zone. He acknowledged the contribution of the IOC-UNESCO ICG/IOTWMS in reducing tsunami risk in the region and reminded the Terms of Reference of the WG-NWIO. He wished all the participants a very successful meeting and an enjoyable stay in Iran. Dr Juma Al Maskari, Chair of the ICG/IOTWMS WG-NWIO thanked Dr Zaker and the Iranian government for hosting this meeting in Iran, the ICG/IOTWMS Secretariat for making preparations and all the participants for participating this meeting. He recalled that the WG-NWIO has been set up in the ICG/IOTWMS-X session in March 2015. Dr Al Maskari mentioned that this meeting offers a good opportunity to take stock of the progress made in the inter-sessional period and plan future activities. He concluded by welcoming all participants to the meeting. Dr Srinivasa Kumar Tummala, Head of the ICG/IOTWMS Secretariat welcomed all the participants to the meeting. He recalled that the WG-NWIO was established in the ICG/IOTWMS-X session with initial membership comprising India, Iran, Oman, Pakistan and Yemen to enhance tsunami warning system in the Makran region. He mentioned that the recent earthquake and minor tsunami events in September 2013 and February 2017 in Pakistan serve as a strong reminder that we need to closely study the Makran subduction zone to enhance the technical aspects of tsunami warning as well as awareness and preparedness. He listed the progress made in the inter-sessional period and also informed that this meeting offers a great opportunity to identify priorities in the region and develop a funding proposal for submission to United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). Dr. Tummala thanked Dr. Zaker and the government of Iran for hosting this important meeting. Dr Mahin Ghazani, Director of Science Department of the Iranian National Commission to UNESCO and Secretary of the Iranian National Committee for Oceanography welcomed all of the participants to the meeting. She informed that the IOC-UNESCO has an overall mandate for ocean science and capacity development in support of the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development. With strong regional presence, links to other regional bodies and expertise, IOC-UNESCO is rightly placed to support ocean related activities of the 148 Member States. She mentioned that IOC developed strong outreach to support national policy in ocean observations, monitoring ocean health, ocean hazards and emerging ocean issues. Dr. Ghazani listed the contribution of IOC to implementation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations (UN) Agenda 2030. She thanked Dr. Zaker for hosting this important event in Iran and wished the meeting a success.

Description: OpenASFA input

Description: Published

Description: Non Refereed

Description: The coast forms a dynamic, interface zone where the land and sea realms meet and is characterised by some of the world’s most sensitive ecosystems, such as mangroves, wetlands, coral reefs, dunes and beaches. Unlike watersheds, coastal areas have no natural, clear nor precise boundaries. They are subjected continuously to the natural processes of weathering, coastal erosion, coastal flooding and sea-level rise. The impacts of these processes and events vary from one coastal zone to another depending on the geology and geomorphology of the coast and its exposure to natural processes. As the interface between land and sea, coastal areas perform many essential functions like natural protection against storms, regulation of water exchange between land and sea, regulation of the chemical composition of sediments and water, storage and recycling of nutrients and maintenance of biological and genetic diversity. From socio-economic perspectives, coastal zones are important settlement areas which play a critical role in the wealth creation of many nations as they offer access to fisheries and commerce, proximity to rich agricultural lowlands, aesthetic landscapes as well as cultural and recreational opportunities.

Description: OpenASFA input

Description: Published

Description: Refereed

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): 223–235, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-21-0110.1.

Description: Previous work with simulations of oceanographic high-frequency (HF) radars has identified possible improvements when using maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) for direction of arrival; however, methods for determining the number of emitters (here defined as spatially distinct patches of the ocean surface) have not realized these improvements. Here we describe and evaluate the use of the likelihood ratio (LR) for emitter detection, demonstrating its application to oceanographic HF radar data. The combined detection–estimation methods MLE-LR are compared with multiple signal classification method (MUSIC) and MUSIC parameters for SeaSonde HF radars, along with a method developed for 8-channel systems known as MUSIC-Highest. Results show that the use of MLE-LR produces similar accuracy, in terms of the RMS difference and correlation coefficients squared, as previous methods. We demonstrate that improved accuracy can be obtained for both methods, at the cost of fewer velocity observations and decreased spatial coverage. For SeaSondes, accuracy improvements are obtained with less commonly used parameter sets. The MLE-LR is shown to be able to resolve simultaneous closely spaced emitters, which has the potential to improve observations obtained by HF radars operating in complex current environments.

Description: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant OCE-1658475. Computing resources were provided by the UCSB Center for Scientific Computing through an NSF MRSEC (DMR-1720256) and NSF CNS-1725797.

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 Physical Oceanography 51(10), (2021): 3235–3252, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0288.1.

Description: Recent mooring measurements from the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program have revealed abundant cyclonic eddies at both sides of Cape Farewell, the southern tip of Greenland. In this study, we present further observational evidence, from both Eulerian and Lagrangian perspectives, of deep cyclonic eddies with intense rotation (ζ/f 〉 1) around southern Greenland and into the Labrador Sea. Most of the observed cyclones exhibit strongest rotation below the surface at 700–1000 dbar, where maximum azimuthal velocities are ~30 cm s−1 at radii of ~10 km, with rotational periods of 2–3 days. The cyclonic rotation can extend to the deep overflow water layer (below 1800 dbar), albeit with weaker azimuthal velocities (~10 cm s−1) and longer rotational periods of about one week. Within the middepth rotation cores, the cyclones are in near solid-body rotation and have the potential to trap and transport water. The first high-resolution hydrographic transect across such a cyclone indicates that it is characterized by a local (both vertically and horizontally) potential vorticity maximum in its middepth core and cold, fresh anomalies in the deep overflow water layer, suggesting its source as the Denmark Strait outflow. Additionally, the propagation and evolution of the cyclonic eddies are illustrated with deep Lagrangian floats, including their detachments from the boundary currents to the basin interior. Taken together, the combined Eulerian and Lagrangian observations have provided new insights on the boundary current variability and boundary–interior exchange over a geographically large scale near southern Greenland, calling for further investigations on the (sub)mesoscale dynamics in the region.

Description: OOI mooring data are based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement 1743430. S. Zou, A. Bower, and H. Furey gratefully acknowledge the support from the Physical Oceanography Program of the U.S. National Science Foundation Grant OCE-1756361. R.S. Pickart acknowledges support from National Science Foundation Grants OCE-1259618 and OCE-1756361. N. P. Holliday and L. Houpert were supported by NERC programs U.K. OSNAP (NE/K010875) and U.K. OSNAP-Decade (NE/T00858X/1).

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(12),(2021): 3651–3662, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-21-0076.1.

Description: Ocean striations are composed of alternating quasi-zonal band-like flows; this kind of organized structure of currents can be found in all the world’s oceans and seas. Previous studies have mainly been focused on the mechanisms of their generation and propagation. This study uses the spatial high-pass filtering to obtain the three-dimensional structure of ocean striations in the North Pacific in both the z coordinate and σ coordinate based on 10-yr averaged Simple Ocean Data Assimilation version 3 (SODA3) data. First, we identify an ideal-fluid potential density domain where the striations are undisturbed by the surface forcing and boundary effects. Second, using the isopycnal layer analysis, we show that on isopycnal surfaces the orientations of striations nearly follow the potential vorticity (PV) contours, while in the meridional–vertical plane the central positions of striations are generally aligned with the latitude of zero gradient of the relative PV. Our analysis provides a simple dynamical interpretation and better understanding for the role of ocean striations.

Description: This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42076025, 41676021), the Key Special Project for introduced Talents Team of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou) (GML2019ZD0306), the National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China (2013CB956201). The numerical simulation is supported by the High Performance Computing Division in the South China Sea Institute of Oceanography. The authors thank Tingjin Guan for the help in enhancing drawing quality.

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: © 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: The southern coast of Dominican Republic is a very populated region, withseveral important cities including Santo Domingo, its capital. Important activities are rooted in the southern coast including tourism, industry, commercial ports, and, energy facilities, amongothers. According to historical reports, it has been impacted by big earthquakes accompanied by tsunamis as in Azua in 1751 and recently Pedernales in 2010, but their sources are not clearly identified.With partial support of the European Union funded project "Life-Saving Actions: Disaster preparedness and seismic and tsunami risk reduction in the south coast of San Cristóbal province, Dominican Republic» implemented by UNDP, UNESCO and the Assembly of Cooperation for Peace in Dominican Republic (ACPP),UNESCO together with the Seismological Institute of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo,organized the meeting of experts "Sources of tsunamis in the Caribbean with possibility to impact the southern coast of the Dominican Republic", on 6 and 7 May 2016, with invited experts and specialists ofDominican Republic, France, Haiti, Spainand theUnited States.The invited experts analysedin a closed meeting three groups of tsunami sources(tectonic sources, landslides and volcanic eruptions)of which they identified two groups of crediblesources of tsunamis in the Caribbean that could impact the southern coast of the Dominican Republic(tectonic sources and submarine landslides):I. Tectonic Sources: A.Near-field tectonic sources(less than 500 km from impact zone):-Western Muertos Trough (WMT) –Mw 8.0:-Small Muertos Trough 1 (SMT1) –Mw 7.6-Small Muertos Trough 2 (SMT2) –Mw 7.6-Muertos Trough Mega-splay (MS)–Mw 7.7B.Far-field tectonic sources:1. Southern Caribbean:-Northern Panama Deformed Belt (NPDB)–Mw 8.5-West branch of the South Caribbean Deformed Belt (WSCDB)–Mw 8.6-Full South Caribbean Deformed Belt (FSCDB)2. Northeastern Caribbean: Although thefollowing sources are at less than500 km of the impact zone, experts classified them as far-field given its expectedlower impact:-Puerto Rico Trench (PRT) –Mw 8.6-Mona Extension Fault (MEF) –Mw 7.6II. Submarine landslides: Within the different sourcesdiscussed only one was consideredasa potential threat, a potential landslide located ~100 km off the coast of Santo Domingo, denominated Complutense Slump (CS)by Granja et al. (2014).Volume of slump: 224km3.

Description: OpenASFA input

Description: Published

Description: Non Refereed

Description: Mr Renato Solidum, Director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology PHIVOLCS delivered the welcome speech on behalf of the Government of Philippines. He recalled that Philippines is a country that is exposed to several natural hazards. He indicated that PHIVOLCS is happy to host the 5th meeting of the Pacific Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (PTWS) South China Sea Region Working Group (SCS-WG), and emphasized the importance of monitoring real time data from regional and global seismic networks in order to detect and rapidly locate, size, and characterize the source of tsunami, forecast coastal impacts and assess potential hazards. He officially opened the meeting.

Description: OpenASFA input

Description: Published

Description: Non Refereed

Description: This manual seeks to assist countries participating in the IOC-coordinated regional Tsunami Warning and Mitigation Systems in strengthening their existing tsunami warning and emergency responses through the development of Tsunami Warning and Emergency Response Plans and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). It relates to tsunami warning authorities (referred to as National Tsunami Warning Centres - NTWCs) and to tsunami emergency management authorities (referred to as Emergency Management Agencies - EMAs), promoting alignment, interoperability and consistency among all stakeholders in the end-to-end tsunami warning system. The Tsunami Warning System (TWS) An end-to-end Tsunami Warning System (TWS) includes the following components: - Knowledge of the hazards and risks to coastal communities from tsunamis and planning for their potential impact - Access to information from the ICG Tsunami Service Providers and/or National Tsunami Warning Centres on the earthquake characteristics, a tsunami assessment and forecast, and tsunami observations - Capability to evaluate the information received in order to determine the threat to their communities - Ability to quickly disseminate and communicate clear, understandable, and actionable warnings to prepared coastal communities in advance of the oncoming tsunami; and - Capacities at national, local and community levels for effective tsunami emergency response. A TWS is best defined in an end-to-end National Tsunami Warning and Emergency Response Plan, with a minimum requirement being the existence of such a document approved at the national level. The main purpose of this guideline is to describe the collective components of the TWS and the allocation (and description) of responsibilities and actions for each component, then designating relevant authorities for each action. The plan may also contain the concepts, thresholds, target times, systems, procedures, and templates used in the tsunami warning chain and a concise description of the tsunami threat for the country (or reference to the relevant documents). In some countries this Plan may need to be split into two plans, a National Tsunami Warning Plan and a Tsunami Emergency Response (TER) Plan, to recognise different functions and responsibilities. In either respect, the overall content and end-to-end processes should be complementary. This guideline describes the TWS and its supporting documents, with a specific focus on tsunami warning plans and SOPs for tsunami warning authorities and emergency response plans and SOPs for key responding agencies. Tsunami warning The NTWC provides warnings of potentially dangerous tsunamis to EMAs and in many cases direct to the communities of the sovereign nation in which it resides and which it serves. It operates on a 24/7 basis to receive earthquake and tsunami information from ICG Tsunami Service Providers (TSPs) of its choice, evaluates the information in terms of the tsunami threat to the country’s coastal communities, and issues warnings about threats. Each country formally nominates a Tsunami Warning Focal Point (TWFP) to the IOC for receipt and national management of tsunami threat information received from TSPs. Some countries have established their own NTWC as the national tsunami warning authority, which have the independent capacity to continuously monitor seismicity in real-time using local and global seismographic networks to locate and determine the magnitude of potentially tsunamigenic earthquakes. This capacity allows them to assess the threat of a tsunami empirically (based mainly on the earthquake magnitude) or through tsunami modelling in the same manner as done by a TSP. Such national assessments may be shared with the TSPs and the NTWCs of other countries. Whether a NTWC has its own in-house seismic processing facility and tsunami monitoring and assessment capability, or whether it relies on the seismic and tsunami threat information contained in notifications from TSPs (and other NTWCs), the next steps are common to all NTWCs. These are the formulation and dissemination of official national warnings to the EMA and other recipients in accordance with the National Tsunami Warning and Emergency Response Plan. A NTWC must respond quickly, be as accurate as possible, and be reliable in order to be effective. In order to achieve this, an NTWC should have regularly exercised and tested SOPs in place for efficiently receiving the earthquake and tsunami information from TSPs (and other NTWCs), or generated by themselves, evaluate and assess the threat to their country before issuing clearly understood threat alerts to national authorities responsible for emergency management and public safety. In some cases NTWCs may issue warnings directly to the public and media, but still in consultation with EMA. This guideline describes the essential functions of a NTWC and the relationship of an NTWC to ICG Tsunami Service Providers (TSPs) and other NTWCs. It is supported by Annexes containing more detail and examples. Tsunami emergency response In association with other authorities, government agencies, and community groups, EMAs must establish and maintain preparedness for an effective tsunami response through hazard risk assessment and the establishment of emergency response plans and accompanying procedures that focus on public awareness, public alerting, and evacuations. These plans and procedures must acknowledge that notifications from a NTWC may provide little response time – a tsunami generated by a local earthquake may impact within minutes, and they can occur at any time of the day or night. In such cases, natural warning signs (e.g. unexpected sudden drop in sea level indicating the pending arrival of the tsunami crest, although not always the case) may be able to provide much more timely warnings than waiting for the seismic information to feasibly reach the sensors, be analysed and tsunami forecasts and warnings generated and issued. During tsunami events EMAs must immediately interpret the warnings issued by the NTWC, and then decide on the appropriate response actions. Accordingly, they must also operate on a 24/7 basis in order to disseminate warnings (if required), instructions and other safety information to agencies at all applicable levels of government, threatened communities, and the media, in accordance with the National Tsunami Warning and Emergency Response Plan. They are also responsible for informing the public of the “All Clear” when the threat is over. Through the activation of Emergency Operations Centres (EOCs) at the respective levels of government, EMAs must coordinate an appropriate emergency response amongst all participating agencies. This guideline covers the linkage between the NTWC and the EMA with a description of the procedures to be adopted by the latter as recipients or potential recipients of warnings from their NTWC, and their subsequent response actions. It is supported by Annexes containing more detail and examples.

Description: OpenASFA input

Description: Published

Description: Refereed

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(4), (2022): 491–502, https://doi.org/10.1175/jtech-d-21-0046.1.

Description: The Air-Launched Autonomous Micro Observer (ALAMO) is a versatile profiling float that can be launched from an aircraft to make temperature and salinity observations of the upper ocean for over a year with high temporal sampling. Similar in dimensions and weight to an airborne expendable bathythermograph (AXBT), but with the same capability as Argo profiling floats, ALAMOs can be deployed from an A-sized (sonobuoy) launch tube, the stern ramp of a cargo plane, or the door of a small aircraft. Unlike an AXBT, however, the ALAMO float directly measures pressure, can incorporate additional sensors, and is capable of performing hundreds of ocean profiles compared to the single temperature profile provided by an AXBT. Upon deployment, the float parachutes to the ocean, releases the air-deployment package, and immediately begins profiling. Ocean profile data along with position and engineering information are transmitted via the Iridium satellite network, automatically processed, and then distributed by the Global Telecommunications System for use by the operational forecasting community. The ALAMO profiling mission can be modified using the two-way Iridium communications to change the profiling frequency and depth. Example observations are included to demonstrate the ALAMO’s utility.

Description: This work was supported by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration under Grants NA13OAR4830233 (as part of CINAR Sandy Supplemental funding from the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013) and NA14OAR4320158 and by Office of Naval Research under Grants N0001416WX01384, N0001416WX01262, and N000141512293. ALAMO floats are commercially available from MRV Systems, LLC (https://www.mrvsys.com).

Description: Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of [publisher] for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Schlundt, M., Farrar, J. T., Bigorre, S. P., Plueddemann, A. J., & Weller, R. A. (2020). Accuracy of wind observations from open-ocean buoys: correction for flow distortion. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 37(4), 687-703, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-19-0132.1.

Description: The comparison of equivalent neutral winds obtained from (i) four WHOI buoys in the subtropics and (ii) scatterometer estimates at those locations reveals a root-mean-square (RMS) difference of 0.56–0.76 m s−1. To investigate this RMS difference, different buoy wind error sources were examined. These buoys are particularly well suited to examine two important sources of buoy wind errors because 1) redundant anemometers and a comparison with numerical flow simulations allow us to quantitatively assess flow distortion errors, and 2) 1-min sampling at the buoys allows us to examine the sensitivity of buoy temporal sampling/averaging in the buoy–scatterometer comparisons. The interanemometer difference varies as a function of wind direction relative to the buoy wind vane and is consistent with the effects of flow distortion expected based on numerical flow simulations. Comparison between the anemometers and scatterometer winds supports the interpretation that the interanemometer disagreement, which can be up to 5% of the wind speed, is due to flow distortion. These insights motivate an empirical correction to the individual anemometer records and subsequent comparison with scatterometer estimates show good agreement.

Description: We gratefully acknowledge the help of three anonymous reviewers, whose input greatly improved the paper. In particular, one reviewer pointed out a mistake in our initial interpretation of scatterometer stability, which was corrected in the final manuscript. JTF and MS were supported by NASA Grant NNX14AM71G (International Ocean Vector Winds Science Team). The SPURS observations were supported by NASA (Grants NNX11AE84G, NNX15AG20G, and 80NSSC18K1494). The Stratus, NTAS, and WHOTS ocean reference stations (ORS) are long-term surface moorings deployed as part of the OceanSITES (http://www.oceansites.org) component of the Global Ocean Observing System, and are supported by NOAA’s Climate Program Office’s Ocean Observing and Monitoring Division, as are RAW, AJP, and SPB through the Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region (CINAR) under Cooperative Agreement NA14OAR4320158 with NOAA Climate Program Office (CPO) (FundRef No. 100007298). The technical staff of the UOP Group at WHOI and the crews of NOAA and UNOLS vessels have been essential to the successful long-term maintenance of the ORS.

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): 2203-2226, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0313.1.

Description: The emerging view of the abyssal circulation is that it is associated with bottom-enhanced mixing, which results in downwelling in the stratified ocean interior and upwelling in a bottom boundary layer along the insulating and sloping seafloor. In the limit of slowly varying vertical stratification and topography, however, boundary layer theory predicts that these upslope and downslope flows largely compensate, such that net water mass transformations along the slope are vanishingly small. Using a planetary geostrophic circulation model that resolves both the boundary layer dynamics and the large-scale overturning in an idealized basin with bottom-enhanced mixing along a midocean ridge, we show that vertical variations in stratification become sufficiently large at equilibrium to reduce the degree of compensation along the midocean ridge flanks. The resulting large net transformations are similar to estimates for the abyssal ocean and span the vertical extent of the ridge. These results suggest that boundary flows generated by mixing play a crucial role in setting the global ocean stratification and overturning circulation, requiring a revision of abyssal ocean theories.

Description: We acknowledge funding support from National Science Foundation Awards 6932401 and 6936732.

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): 2315-2321, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0327.1.

Description: Low-frequency currents and eddies transport sediment, pathogens, larvae, and heat along the coast and between the shoreline and deeper water. Here, low-frequency currents (between 0.1 and 4.0 mHz) observed in shallow surfzone waters for 120 days during a wide range of wave conditions are compared with theories for generation by instabilities of alongshore currents, by ocean-wave-induced sea surface modulations, and by a nonlinear transfer of energy from breaking waves to low-frequency motions via a two-dimensional inverse energy cascade. For these data, the low-frequency currents are not strongly correlated with shear of the alongshore current, with the strength of the alongshore current, or with wave-group statistics. In contrast, on many occasions, the low-frequency currents are consistent with an inverse energy cascade from breaking waves. The energy of the low-frequency surfzone currents increases with the directional spread of the wave field, consistent with vorticity injection by short-crested breaking waves, and structure functions increase with spatial lags, consistent with a cascade of energy from few-meter-scale vortices to larger-scale motions. These results include the first field evidence for the inverse energy cascade in the surfzone and suggest that breaking waves and nonlinear energy transfers should be considered when estimating nearshore transport processes across and along the coast.

Description: Funding was provided by a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship [from OUSD(R&E)] and NSF.

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 the Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology 37(5), (2020): 807-824, doi:10.1175/JTECH-D-19-0054.1.

Description: Marine mammals are under growing pressure as anthropogenic use of the ocean increases. Ship strikes of large whales and loud underwater sound sources including air guns for marine geophysical prospecting and naval midfrequency sonar are criticized for their possible negative effects on marine mammals. Competent authorities regularly require the implementation of mitigation measures, including vessel speed reductions or shutdown of acoustic sources if marine mammals are sighted in sensitive areas or in predefined exclusion zones around a vessel. To ensure successful mitigation, reliable at-sea detection of animals is crucial. To date, ship-based marine mammal observers are the most commonly implemented detection method; however, thermal (IR) imaging–based automatic detection systems have been used in recent years. This study evaluates thermal imaging–based automatic whale detection technology for its use across different oceans. The performance of this technology is characterized with respect to environmental conditions, and an automatic detection algorithm for whale blows is presented. The technology can detect whales in polar, temperate, and subtropical ocean regimes over distances of up to several kilometers and outperforms marine mammal observers in the number of whales detected. These results show that thermal imaging technology can be used to assist in providing protection for marine mammals against ship strike and acoustic impact across the world’s oceans.

Description: This work was funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) under Award N000141310856, by the Environmental Studies Research Fund (ESRF; esrfunds.org) under Award 2014-03S and by the Alfred-Wegener-Institute Helmholtz Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung. DPZ and OB declare competing financial interests: 1) Patent US8941728B2, DE102011114084B4: A method for automatic real-time marine mammal detection. The patent describes the ideas basic to the automatic whale detection software as used to acquire and process the data presented in this paper. 2) Licensing of the Tashtego automatic whale detection software to the manufacturer of IR sensor. The authors confirm that these competing financial interests did not alter their adherence good scientific practice. We thank P. Abgrall, J. Coffey, K. Keats, B. Mactavish, V. Moulton, and S. Penney-Belbin for data collection or IR image review. We thank S. Besaw, J. Christian, A. Coombs, P. Coombs, W. Costello, T. Elliott, E. Evans, I. Goudie, C. Jones, K. Knowles, R. Martin, A. Murphy, D. and J. Shepherd; and the staffs at the Irish Loop Express, the Myrick Wireless Interpretive Centre, the Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, and the lighthouse keepers for logistical assistance at our remote field site. We thank D. Boutilier and B. McDonald (DFO) for assisting us in obtaining license to occupy permits for Cape Race. We thank D. Taylor (ESRF Research Manager) for his support.

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(6),(2020): 1717-1732, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0273.1.

Description: Recent measurements and modeling indicate that roughly half of the Pacific-origin water exiting the Chukchi Sea shelf through Barrow Canyon forms a westward-flowing current known as the Chukchi Slope Current (CSC), yet the trajectory and fate of this current is presently unknown. In this study, through the combined use of shipboard velocity data and information from five profiling floats deployed as quasi-Lagrangian particles, we delve further into the trajectory and the fate of the CSC. During the period of observation, from early September to early October 2018, the CSC progressed far to the north into the Chukchi Borderland. The northward excursion is believed to result from the current negotiating Hanna Canyon on the Chukchi slope, consistent with potential vorticity dynamics. The volume transport of the CSC, calculated using a set of shipboard transects, decreased from approximately 2 Sv (1 Sv ≡ 106 m3 s−1) to near zero over a period of 4 days. This variation can be explained by a concomitant change in the wind stress curl over the Chukchi shelf from positive to negative. After turning northward, the CSC was disrupted and four of the five floats veered offshore, with one of the floats permanently leaving the current. It is hypothesized that the observed disruption was due to an anticyclonic eddy interacting with the CSC, which has been observed previously. These results demonstrate that, at times, the CSC can get entrained into the Beaufort Gyre.

Description: This work was principally supported by the Stratified Ocean Dynamics of the Arctic (SODA) program under ONR Grant N000141612450. S.B. wants to thank Labex iMust for supporting his research. R.S.P. acknowledges U.S. National Science Foundation Grants OPP-1702371, OPP-1733564, and PLR-1303617. P.L. acknowledges National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Grant NA14-OAR4320158. M.L. acknowledges National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants 41706025 and 41506018. T.P. thanks ENS de Lyon for travel support funding. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of Steve Jayne, Pelle Robins, and Alex Ekholm at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for preparation, deployment, and data provision for the ALTO floats. Chanhyung Jeon assisted in preparing and deploying the floats. The invaluable support of the crew of the R/V Sikuliaq is also gratefully acknowledged.

Description: In December 2004, 227,899 people lost their lives and around US$10 billion were estimated as overall economic losses in the 14 countries affected by the 9.1-magnitude Indian Ocean earthquake. In response to the devastation caused by the earthquake and consecutive tsunami, the international community reinforced and expanded its initiatives to reduce the tsunami-related risk of coastal communities worldwide. In response, the Tsunami Unit of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (UNESCO/IOC) was established. It aims to prevent the loss of lives and livelihoods that are caused by tsunamis, offering its support to IOC Member States in assessing tsunami risk, implementing Tsunami Early Warning Systems (EWS) and educating communities at risk about preparedness measures. Since 2015, the UNESCO/IOC has been promoting the Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme as an international performance-based community recognition pilot consisting of key actions that help to reduce tsunami-related risks to individuals and communities. Through the Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme, communities become aware of the risks they face from tsunamis and take steps to address them. To support current and future pilots, UNESCO/IOC commissioned the review and analysis of the Tsunami Ready Guidelines, which were initially established in the Caribbean, with the purpose of expanding the implementation of the programme globally. To this end, a desk-based review of all key documents and literature was conducted to assess the existing frameworks, documents and additional literature about the implementation of the Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme in different regions Figure 1. Recognition sign delivered and countries. Likewise, interviews with to St Kitts & Nevis, in 2021. experts on the Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme, as well as an online survey among relevant and experienced users, were conducted with the purpose of having a better understanding of the areas to be reinforced. This document presents the Standard Guidelines for the Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme based on the review process undertaken. After this introduction, the second section of this manual includes the framework and background information; the third section identifies key issues concerning the Tsunami Ready Recognition Programme and its methodological references; the fourth section presents the indicators to achieve the Tsunami Ready recognition, as well as the templates for requesting recognition; and finally, the fifth section contains the glossary of terms and a list of available tools and references to facilitate its implementation.

Description: OPENASFA INPUT

Description: Published

Description: Not Known

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(12), (2020): 3379-3402, https://do.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0028.1.

Description: One of the largest and most persistent features in the Alboran Sea is the Western Alboran Gyre (WAG), an anticyclonic recirculation bounded by the Atlantic Jet (AJ) to the north and the Moroccan coast to the south. Eulerian budgets from several months of a high-resolution model run are used to examine the exchange of water across the Eulerian WAG’s boundary and the processes affecting the salinity, temperature, and vorticity of the WAG. The volume transport across the sides of the WAG is found to be related to vertical isopycnal movement at the base of the gyre. Advection is found to drive a decay in the salinity minimum and anticyclonic vorticity of the Eulerian WAG. Given the large contributions of advection, a Lagrangian analysis is performed, revealing geometric aspects of the exchange that are hidden in an Eulerian view. In particular, stable and unstable manifolds identify a stirring region around the outer reaches of the gyre where water is exchanged with the WAG on a time scale of weeks. Its complement is an inner core that expands with depth and exchanges water with its surroundings on much longer time scales. The 3D evolution of one parcel, or lobe, of water as it enters the WAG is also described, identifying a general Lagrangian subduction pathway.

Description: This work was supported on DOD (MURI) Grant N000141110087, ONR Grant N000141812417, and NSF Grant OCE-1558806.

Description: 2021-05-18

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(7), (2020): 1839-1852, https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-19-0209.1.

Description: The Lagrangian characteristics of the surface flow field arising when an idealized, anticyclonic, mesoscale, isolated deep-ocean eddy collides with continental slope and shelf topography are explored. In addition to fluid parcel trajectories, we consider the trajectories of biological organisms that are able to navigate and swim, and for which shallow water is a destination. Of particular interest is the movement of organisms initially located in the offshore eddy, the manner in which the eddy influences the ability of the organisms to reach the shelf break, and the spatial and temporal distributions of organisms that do so. For nonswimmers or very slow swimmers, the organisms arrive at the shelf break in distinct pulses, with different pulses occurring at different locations along the shelf break. This phenomenon is closely related to the episodic formation of trailing vortices that are formed after the eddy collides with the continental slope, turns, and travels parallel to the coast. Analysis based on finite-time Lyapunov exponents reveals initial locations of all successful trajectories reaching the shoreline, and provides maps of the transport pathways showing that much of the cross-shelf-break transport occurs in the lee of the eddy as it moves parallel to the shore. The same analysis shows that the onshore transport is interrupted after a trailing vortex detaches. As the swimming speeds are increased, the organisms are influenced less by the eddy and tend to show up en mass and in a single pulse.

Description: IR and LP were supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant OCE-1558806. DC was supported by NSF U.S. National Science Foundation’s Physical Oceanography program through Grants OCE-1059632 and OCE-1433953 as well as the Academic Programs Office, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. We acknowledge high-performance computing support from Yellowstone (http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7wd3xhc) provided by NCAR’s Computational and Information Systems Laboratory, sponsored by the National Science 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 Journal of Climate 34(5), (2021): 1767-1788, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-1020.1.

Description: Marine heatwaves along the coast of Western Australia, referred to as Ningaloo Niño, have had dramatic impacts on the ecosystem in the recent decade. A number of local and remote forcing mechanisms have been put forward; however, little is known about the depth structure of such temperature extremes. Utilizing an eddy-active global ocean general circulation model, Ningaloo Niño and the corresponding cold Ningaloo Niña events are investigated between 1958 and 2016, with a focus on their depth structure. The relative roles of buoyancy and wind forcing are inferred from sensitivity experiments. Composites reveal a strong symmetry between cold and warm events in their vertical structure and associated large-scale spatial patterns. Temperature anomalies are largest at the surface, where buoyancy forcing is dominant, and extend down to 300-m depth (or deeper), with wind forcing being the main driver. Large-scale subsurface anomalies arise from a vertical modulation of the thermocline, extending from the western Pacific into the tropical eastern Indian Ocean. The strongest Ningaloo Niños in 2000 and 2011 are unprecedented compound events, where long-lasting high temperatures are accompanied by extreme freshening, which emerges in association with La Niñas, that is more common and persistent during the negative phase of the interdecadal Pacific oscillation. It is shown that Ningaloo Niños during La Niña phases have a distinctively deeper reach and are associated with a strengthening of the Leeuwin Current, while events during El Niño are limited to the surface layer temperatures, likely driven by local atmosphere–ocean feedbacks, without a clear imprint on salinity and velocity.

Description: The following support is gratefully acknowledged: the Feodor-Lynen Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the WHOI Postdoctoral Scholar program (to SR), the Office of Naval Research under project number N-00014-19-12646 (to GG), the James E. and Barbara V. Moltz Fellowship for Climate-Related Research (to CCU), and IndoArchipel from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) as part of the Special Priority Program (SPP)-1889 “Regional Sea Level Change and Society” (SeaLevel) (for PW).

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, 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(6), (2020): 1557-1582, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-19-0239.1.

Description: We examine various contributions to the vertical velocity field within large mesoscale eddies by analyzing multiple solutions to an idealized numerical model of a representative anticyclonic warm core Gulf Stream ring. Initial conditions are constructed to reproduce the observed density and nutrient profiles collected during the Warm Core Rings Program. The contributions to vertical fluxes diagnosed from the numerical simulations are compared against a divergence-based, semidiagnostic equation and a generalized omega equation to better understand the dynamics of the vertical velocity field. Frictional decay alone is found to be ineffective in raising isopycnals and transporting nutrients to the upper ocean. With representative wind forcing, the magnitude of vorticity gradient–induced Ekman pumping is not necessarily larger than the current-induced counterpart on a time scale relevant to ecosystem response. Under realistic forcing conditions, strain deformation can perturb the ring to be noncircular and induce vertical velocities much larger than the Ekman vertical velocities. Nutrient budget diagnosis, together with analysis of the relative magnitudes of the various types of vertical fluxes, allows us to describe the time-scale dependence of nutrient delivery. At time scales that are relevant to individual phytoplankton (from hours to days), the magnitudes of nutrient flux by Ekman velocities and deformation-induced velocities are comparable. Over the life span of a typical warm core ring, which can span multiple seasons, surface current–induced Ekman pumping is the most effective mechanism in upper-ocean nutrient enrichment because of its persistence in the center of anticyclones regardless of the direction of the wind forcing.

Description: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Ocean Science Division under Grant OCE-1558960. PG also acknowledges support of the NASA Physical Oceanography Program Grant NNX16H59G. KC would like to thank D. McGillicuddy Jr. for inspiring discussions and suggestions during the course of this study. Constructive comments from two anonymous reviewers are appreciated.