Browsing Oceanography by Subject "Physical oceanography"
Now showing items 1-20 of 43
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A Geophysical Investigation of the Arctic Sea Ice Surface
The oldest records of the Arctic sea ice pack illustrate a frozen, yet dynamic icescape composed of hummocks and weathered ridges draped in thick snow. In recent decades, the effects of climate change have transformed this ... -
A New Instrument and Method for Nitrogen-loss Studies in Oxygen Deficient Zones
The ocean’s biogeochemical cycles are coming under increasing stress due to global climate change and anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. Three different factors are stressing the oceans: rising temperatures, ... -
The Abyssal Ocean's Contributions to the Global Energy and Sea Level Budgets Between the 1990s and 2000s
Over the past three decades, Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW), a cold, dense water-mass produced around Antarctica that feeds the bottom limb of the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC), has warmed, freshened, and declined ... -
Arctic Ocean Circulation Patterns Revealed by Ocean Bottom Pressure Anomalies
(2013-04-17)Over the last few decades, the Arctic Ocean has experienced drastic changes that include increased temperature, changes in freshwater distribution, and decrease in sea ice extent and thickness. These changes, which potentially ... -
Coastal sources of estuarine inflow
This dissertation considers the source of water that enters estuaries from the coastal ocean using a series of realistic and idealized ocean models. The first project examines the source of planktonic larvae of the marine ... -
Eddy Circulation, Heat and Salt Balances, and Ocean Metabolism: Observations from a Seaglider-Mooring Array at Ocean Station Papa
Seagliders were deployed at Ocean Station Papa (OSP; 50N, 145W) in the southern Gulf of Alaska, augmenting a NOAA Ocean Climate Stations surface fluxes mooring and subsurface ADCP, from 8 June 2008 to 21 January 2010. ... -
Eddy Vertical Structure and Variability: vortex evolution and the geography of geostrophic turbulence
Glider observations of submesoscale and mesoscale eddy structure, behavior, and evolution are analyzed revealing both processes of eddy decay and statistical properties of geostrophic turbulence (i.e. mesoscale eddy-eddy ... -
Estimates of Drag Coefficients and Surface Waves under Tropical Cyclones using Subsurface EM-APEX floats
Nineteen autonomous EM-APEX floats were air-launched from aircraft to measure the profiles of ocean current velocity, temperature, salinity, and high-frequency velocity variance (σ_u ) ̃^2 under five different tropical ... -
Estimation of inherent optical properties and phytoplankton community structure from hyperspectral in-water radiometry
(2013-07-25)Inverse algorithms are developed to retrieve hyperspectral absorption and backscattering coefficients from measurements of hyperspectral upwelling radiance and downwelling irradiance in vertically homogeneous waters. The ... -
Evaluating Physical and Biogeochemical Controls on Ocean Oxygen, Nitrate, and Carbon in Coupled Biogeochemical Ocean Circulation Models
The balance of ocean physics and the photosynthetic production and respiratory consumption of O2 dynamically links oxygen, organic carbon, and nitrate in the ocean. This thesis uses coupled biogeochemical ocean circulation ... -
Evolving Ice-Ocean Dynamics of the Western Arctic
This dissertation examines the western Arctic Ocean and how its freshwater content and dynamics have evolved, particularly in the Beaufort Gyre circulation system north of Alaska. The recent growth of the Beaufort Sea ... -
Global Observations of Physical and Biogeochemical Processes in the Ocean
We employ numerous global, or semi-global, datasets to observe the large-scale variability of physical and biogeochemical phenomena. In Chapter 1, we use Argo floats to estimate the vertical displacement of internal gravity ... -
Impacts of Surface Waves on Turbulence in Ocean Surface Boundary Layers: Observations and Scaling
Turbulence in the ocean surface boundary layer (OSBL) drives mixing, brings nutrients from depth, and mediates the air-sea exchange of heat, momentum, and gases and is thus a key player in the weather and climate system. ... -
Innovative Observational Global and Regional Ocean Water Mass, Circulation, and Mixing Analyses
This dissertation applies novel methodology to existing oceanographic datasets in order to gain new insights into the circulation and mixing of water masses at both regional and global scales. Given the boom of in-situ ... -
Internal Waves in the Western Arctic Ocean
The importance of internal waves in the Western Arctic Ocean is assessed using a combination of observations from Ice-Tethered Profilers drifting in the Canada Basin between Fall 2005 and Fall 2014 and numerical simulations ... -
Investigation of the Spatial and Temporal Structure of Internal Waves
A collection of field experiments and model simulations are used to investigate the spatial and temporal aspects of internal waves, with a focus on near-inertial waves and internal tides. First, the near-inertial wave field ... -
Landfast Ice Breakup Timing and Processes Along the Alaska Beaufort Sea Coast
The record minimum in the extent of drifting sea ice on the Arctic Ocean was set in 2012, and the ten lowest retreats of summer sea ice were observed in the last decade. In this thesis we investigate whether there have ... -
Large-scale Ocean Circulation Observed from Autonomous Profiling Floats
The general circulation of the ocean plays a central role in the global transport of heat, freshwater, carbon, oxygen, nutrients, and other constituents. The ocean's large-scale circulation strongly influences the ... -
Mechanisms of variability in Atlantic ocean heat transport and meridional overturning in global climate models
Meridional ocean heat transport (OHT) plays a major role in global climate. The Atlantic Ocean is particularly relevant to the global climate because its OHT is northward in both hemispheres due to the existence of the ... -
Meridional Exchanges and Mixing at the Iceland-Faroe Ridge
(2014-02-24)The Greenland-Scotland Ridge influences the exchange of warm and cold water masses between the North Atlantic and the Nordic Sea, a circulation with significant impact on global ocean circulation and climate. This study ...