Accession Number:

ADA561696

Title:

AESOP Internal Tides and Mixing

Descriptive Note:

Final rept. 1 May 2008-31 Dec 2011

Corporate Author:

WASHINGTON UNIV SEATTLE APPLIED PHYSICS LAB

Personal Author(s):

• Girton, James B.
• Kunze, Eric

Report Date:

2012-05-04

Pagination or Media Count:

19.0

Abstract:

This project, with Eric Kunze at the University of Victoria now at APL-UW, was undertaken as part of a Departmental Research Initiative DRI of the Office of Naval Research ONR entitled AESOP Assessing the Effectiveness of Submesoscale Ocean Parameterizations. The principal goals of AESOP were to a increase the understanding of ocean dynamics particularly processes that are not included or not resolved in numerical models and b improve forecasts of ocean conditions. Our Girton and Kunze component of the experiment was focused on internal tides and mixing, both in terms of constraining the dominant mechanisms supplying energy for mixing in the ocean and for the purposes of explaining tidal and internal wave velocity variance in the coastal ocean. The principal tasks of AESOP were a set of ocean observations designed to evaluate submesoscale processes including internal tides and small-scale fronts and eddies in a suite of models of the coastal ocean around Monterey Bay. These observations formed metrics that could be used to test the representation of the processes in the models. In addition, model studies were undertaken to study the impact of those processes on the larger-scale fields.

Descriptors:

• *OCEANOGRAPHIC DATA
• COASTAL REGIONS
• DATA ACQUISITION
• DETECTION
• FLUID DYNAMICS
• INTERNAL WAVES
• METHODOLOGY
• MIXING
• OCEAN MODELS
• OCEAN TIDES
• OCEANOGRAPHIC EQUIPMENT

Subject Categories:

• Physical and Dynamic Oceanography
• Test Facilities, Equipment and Methods

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE