PS41A:
Transport and Coherent Structures: New and Traditional Approaches for Studying Ocean Stirring and Mixing III


Session ID#: 36962

Session Description:
Ocean flows are dominated by coherent structures, like eddies, with lifetimes longer than typical dynamical timescales. Due to their capacity to transport water and material over long distances, these features play an important role in climate, biogeochemistry, and small-scale mixing. Recently, there has been an influx of powerful techniques from the mathematical literature for identifying coherent structures in ocean flows. These include ideas focussed on Lagrangian flow maps, dynamical systems theory, and set-theoretic approaches involving transfer operators and clustering. There remain many questions about how these novel ideas are related to traditional metrics of ocean mixing. For example, how can coherent structures improve eddy parameterizations in ocean models? How do sparse sampling, noise, and smoothing impact the identification of coherent structures, which frequently requires the full flow? How can we exploit novel observational approaches such as autonomous robots, clustered drifter releases, or remote sensing? We invite contributions on transport and coherent structures, including new Eulerian and Lagrangian approaches, numerical modeling studies, observational error assessments, and applications to problems in ocean physics and biogeochemistry. Our hope is to engage a broad swath of the community to help bring these methods to bear on important contemporary problems in oceanography.
Primary Chair:  Ryan P Abernathey, Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, United States
Co-chairs:  Irina Rypina, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, United States, Jonathan M Lilly, Northwest Research Associates, Bellevue, WA, United States and Shane R Keating, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Moderators:  Irina Rypina, WHOI, Woods Hole, MA, United States, Jonathan M Lilly, Northwest Research Associates, Bellevue, WA, United States, Ryan P Abernathey, Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, United States and Shane R Keating, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Student Paper Review Liaison:  Irina Rypina, WHOI, Woods Hole, MA, United States
Index Terms:

4273 Physical and biogeochemical interactions [OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL]
4520 Eddies and mesoscale processes [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
4528 Fronts and jets [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
4568 Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
Cross-Topics:
  • BN - Biogeochemistry and Nutrients
  • OM - Ocean Modeling
  • PL - Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Larger

Abstracts Submitted to this Session:

Material Barriers to Diffusive Mixing: Theory (316654)
George Haller, ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Institute for Mechanical Systems, Zürich, Switzerland and Daniel Karrasch, Technische Universität München, Garching bei München, Germany
Material Barriers to Diffusive Mixing: Ocean Applications (316415)
Daniel Karrasch, Technische Universität München, Garching bei München, Germany and George Haller, ETH Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich, Institute for Mechanical Systems, Zürich, Switzerland
Recovery of vortex properties from Lagrangian trajectories (307334)
Jonathan M Lilly, Theiss Research, La Jolla, CA, United States
Stochastic modeling of anisotropic dispersion in Lagrangian trajectories (311403)
Adam M Sykulski1, Jeffrey J Early2, Sofia C Olhede3 and Jonathan M Lilly2, (1)Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom, (2)NorthWest Research Associates, Redmond, WA, United States, (3)University College London, London, United Kingdom

See more of: Physical Oceanography: Mesoscale and Smaller