Acquisition of Instrumentation for Small-scale Process Studies in the Polar Oceans

Earth And Space Research, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award provides for the acquisition of a Vertical Microstructure Profiler (VMP) that will enhance the quantitative investigations of small and microscale processes associated with near-surface mixing in the northern and southern polar oceans. Such processes include mixing where the primary energy source is conversion of barotropic tidal energy to internal tides, dynamics associated with density currents over the shelf break and continental slope, double diffusion, processes such as thermobaricity and cabbeling associated with nonlinearities in the seawater equation of state, and lateral intrusions at ocean fronts. The VMP resolves the smallest scales of ocean variability - on the order of the several centimeters - which cannot be resolved with normally available shipboard instrumentation. These high-resolution observations are essential for computing the vertical eddy diffusivity in the upper ocean, and for assessing and learning how to more effectively parameterize the mixing associated with the velocity shear and the equation-of-state processes.