Filtering by Subject: Oceanography
Published: 2021-02-11
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
A crucial region of the ocean surface boundary layer (OSBL) is the strongly-sheared and -stratified transition layer (TL) separating the mixed layer from the upper pycnocline, where a diverse range of waves and instabilities are possible. Previous work suggests that these different waves and instabilities will lead to different OSBL behaviours. Therefore, understanding which physical processes [...]
Published: 2021-02-10
Subjects: Oceanography
Among other remote sensing technologies, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has become firmly established in the practice of oceanographic research. Despite solid experience in this field, comprehensive knowledge and interpretation of ocean/sea and vessel wave signatures on radar images are still very challenging. This is not only due to the complex mechanisms involved in the SAR imaging of moving [...]
Published: 2021-02-01
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Unpredictable variations in the ocean originate from both external atmospheric forcing and chaotic processes internal to the ocean itself, and are a crucial sink of predictability on interdecadal timescales. In a global ocean model, we present i.) an optimisation framework to compute the most efficient noise patterns to generate uncertainty and ii.) a uniquely inexpensive, dynamical method for [...]
Published: 2021-01-28
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The role of ocean circulation in transforming surface forcing into interannual-to-multidecadal oceanic variability is an area of ongoing debate. Here, a novel method, establishing exact causal links, is used to quantitatively determine the role of ocean active and passive processes in transforming stochastic surface forcing into heat content variability. To this end, we use a global ocean model [...]
Published: 2021-01-24
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
It has been hypothesized that submesoscale flows play an important role in the vertical transport of climatically important tracers, due to their strong associated vertical velocities. However, the multi-scale, non-linear and Lagrangian nature of transport makes it challenging to attribute proportions of the tracer fluxes to certain processes, scales, regions or flow features. Here we show that [...]
Published: 2021-01-17
Subjects: Engineering, Fluid Dynamics, Hydraulic Engineering, Oceanography, Statistical Models
Regarding wave statistics, nearly every known exceeding probability distribution applied to rogue waves has shown disagreement with its peers. More often than not, models and experiments have shown a fair agreement with the Rayleigh distribution whereas others show that the latter underpredicts extreme heights by almost one order of magnitude. Virtually all previous results seem to be [...]
Published: 2021-01-12
Subjects: Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Linear theory for steady stratified flow over topography sets the range for topographic wavenumbers over which freely propagating internal waves are generated, and the radiation and breaking of these waves contribute to energy dissipation away from the ocean bottom. However, previous numerical work demonstrated that dissipation rates can be enhanced by flow over large scale topographies with [...]
Published: 2020-11-25
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology
The large-scale moistening of the atmosphere in response to the greenhouse gas increases tends to amplify the existing patterns of precipitation minus evaporation (P-E) which, in turn, amplifies the spatial contrast in sea surface salinity (SSS). We propose that subtropical surface salinification due to the intensified hydrological cycle provides a buoyancy sink that increases the rate of ocean [...]
Published: 2020-11-10
Subjects: Oceanography
The Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean is the world’s main production site of Antarctic Bottom Water, a water-mass that is ventilated at the ocean surface before sinking and entraining older water-masses – ultimately replenishing the abyssal global ocean. In recent decades, numerous attempts at estimating the rates of ventilation and overturning of Antarctic Bottom Water in this region have [...]
Published: 2020-11-09
Subjects: Geophysics and Seismology, Oceanography
The sparsity of permanent seismic instrumentation in marine environments often limits the availability of subsea information on geohazards, including active fault systems, in both time and space. One sensing resource that may provide observational access to the seafloor environment are existing networks of ocean bottom fiber optic cables; these cables, coupled to modern distributed acoustic [...]
Published: 2020-10-24
Subjects: Oceanography, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering
Coastal storms cause widespread damage to property, infrastructure, economic activity and the environment. Along open sandy coastlines, two of the primary coastal storm hazards are coastal flooding by elevated ocean water levels and beach erosion as the result of storm wave action. At continental margins characterized by a shallow, wide continental shelf, coastal storms are more commonly [...]
Published: 2020-10-22
Subjects: Geochemistry, Oceanography, Sedimentology
The Lesser Antilles are a densely populated and a very touristic region exposed to many short-term hazards such as hurricanes and tsunamis. However, the historical catalog of these events is too short to allow risk assessment and return period estimations, and it needs to be completed with long-term geological records. Two sediment cores were sampled in March 2018 in a small coastal lagoon on [...]
Published: 2020-08-29
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Human exposure to toxic mercury (Hg) is dominated by the consumption of seafood. Earth system models suggest that Hg in marine ecosystems is supplied by Hg(II) deposition, with a 3x smaller contribution from gaseous Hg(0) uptake, and that photochemical reduction of marine Hg(II) drives important Hg(0) evasion to the atmosphere. Observations of marine Hg(II) deposition and gas exchange are sparse [...]
Published: 2020-08-20
Subjects: Climate, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Most foregoing estimates of historical sea surface temperature (SST) feature warmer global-average SSTs during World War 2 well in excess of climate-model predictions. This warm anomaly, referred to as the WW2WA, was hypothesized to arise from incomplete corrections of biases associated with rapid changes in measurement instruments and protocols. Using linear mixed-effects methods we confirm [...]
Published: 2020-07-21
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Geomorphology, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Engineering, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Accurate knowledge of the sediment budget of a coastal cell is necessary for coastal management and predicting long-term coastal change. An important component in the sediment budget of many wave-dominated embayed coastlines is the amount of sediment that bypasses rocky headlands, which present partial barriers to alongshore transport. Despite a recent surge in research interest in headland [...]