Surface Buoys and Entrainment Processes

PI:Tim Stanton Tim Staton's Email Tim Staton's Homepage

My interests are in quantifying mechanical forcing, turbulence levels and fluxes near the ice interface, lower mixed layer and within the pycnocline to determine when NES processes are enhancing convection within the pycnocline. At each measurement site, ice fluxes and upper ocean heat and salt fluxes will be observed with a flux buoy and ice thermister string set at least 500m from the ship. In the lower mixed layer / pycnocline transition, high resolution profiles of vertical shear and fluid motion associated with turbulent eddies, convective plumes and internal waves will be observed with an upward-looking .25m bin-size 4 beam BADCP and a 0.5m bin-size 5 beam downward-looking BADCP deployed on the pycnocline-following turbulence frame. The frame will also support a 6-m aperature 0.1m spacing high resolution thermistor array designed to resolve turbulent processes at the mixed layer pycnocline interface. These observations in concert with the (u,v,w,T,s) in situ measurements will help identify plume events and observe entrainment processes across the weak, strongly forced pycnocline during the frequent wind storms that traverse the observation area.

In collaboration with Jamie Morrison and Bill Shaw we will observe thermal microstructure profiles on the automated CTD system that will profile from the surface to 300 m every 20 minutes. These data will measure very high resolution density profiles and provide estimates of vertical heat flux and turbulent diffusivity of the water column.