Joint Seminar: Role of Ocean Waves in the Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean System
Until recently, large-scale models did not explicitly take account of ocean surface waves which are a process of a much smaller scale both in space and time. It is, however, becoming obvious that waves mediate a great number of processes both in the atmospheric boundary layer and in the upper ocean. In addition, waves can potentially serve as a climate-change indicator themselves and, together with surface winds have shown increasing trends globally. The nature of these trends and details of their behaviour and variability are not known. In short, without accounting for the wave effects directly, the physics of large-scale air-sea interactions appears inaccurate and incomplete.
In the presentation, effects due to wave-induced mixing in the upper ocean, and climate feedback of this mixing will be discussed. The wave-induced mixing will be introduced through the turbulence produced by non-breaking waves. Laboratory and field observations of such turbulence, and its numerical simulations will be shown. Its implementation in large-scale models for ocean circulation and climate will be demonstrated.
Date
02.05.2012
Time
13:30 h
Place
- Bundesstr. 53, room 022/023
- Seminar Room 022/023, Ground Floor, Bundesstrasse 53, 20146 Hamburg, Hamburg
Speaker
Alexander V. Babanin, Centre for Ocean Engineering, Science and Technology, Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria
Organizers
- Thomas Pohlmann
- Mikhail Dobrynin