Related papers: Separating Mesoscale and Submesoscale Flows from C…
In the framework of Monitoring by Ocean Drifters (MONDO) Project, a set of Lagrangian drifters were released in proximity of the Brazil Current, the western branch of the Subtropical Gyre in the South Atlantic Ocean. The experimental…
The transport of scalar quantities passively advected by velocity fields with a small-scale component can be modeled at meso-scale level by means of an effective drift and an effective diffusivity, which can be determined by means of…
Determining the optimal locations for placing extra observational measurements has practical significance. However, the exact underlying flow field is never known in practice. Significant uncertainty appears when the flow field is inferred…
The three-dimensional transport pathways, the time scales of vertical transport, and the dispersion characteristics of submesoscale currents at an upper-ocean front are investigated using material points (tracer particles) that advect with…
We analyze characteristics of drifter trajectories from the Adriatic Sea with recently introduced nonlinear dynamics techniques. We discuss how in quasi-enclosed basins, relative dispersion as function of time, a standard analysis tool in…
Lagrangian ocean drifters provide highly accurate approximations of ocean surface currents but are sparsely located across the globe. As drifters passively follow ocean currents, there is minimal control on where they will be making…
Lagrangian motions of fluid particles in a general velocity field oscillating in time are studied with the use of the two-timing method. Our aims are: (i) to calculate systematically the most general and practically usable asymptotic…
Many theoretical treatments of transport in heterogeneous Darcy flows consider advection only. When local-scale dispersion is neglected, flux-weighting persists over time; mean Lagrangian and Eulerian flow velocity distributions relate…
Commonplace in oceanography is the collection of ocean drifter positions. Ocean drifters are devices that sit on the surface of the ocean and move with the flow, transmitting their position via GPS to stations on land. Using drifter data,…
This work focuses on buoyant tracers floating on the ocean surface and treats the geostrophic and ageostrophic surface velocities as the 2D solenoidal (non-divergent) and potential (divergent) flow components, respectively. We consider a…
The mesosocpic concept is applied to the theory of mixtures. The aim is to investigate the diffusion phenomenon from a mesoscopic point of view. The domain of the field quantities is extended by the set of mesoscopic variables, here the…
A new kind of Lagrangian diagnostic family is proposed and a specific form of it is suggested for characterizing mixing: the maximal extent of a trajectory (MET). It enables the detection of coherent structures and their dynamics in two-…
Upper-ocean turbulent flows at horizontal length scales smaller than the deformation radius depart from geostrophic equilibrium and develop important vertical velocities, which are key to marine ecology and climatic processes. Due to their…
Quantifying the mechanisms of tracer dispersion in the ocean remains a central question in oceanography, for problems ranging from nutrient delivery to phytoplankton, to the early detection of contaminants. Most analyses have been based on…
We present a model for mixed layer (ML) mesoscale (M) fluxes of an arbitrary tracer in terms of the resolved fields (mean tracer and mean velocity). The treatment of an arbitrary tracer, rather than only buoyancy, is necessary since OGCMs…
Reliable forecasts for the dispersion of oceanic contamination are important for coastal ecosystems, society and the economy as evidenced by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the Fukushima nuclear plant…
Drifters designed to mimic floating marine debris and small patches of pelagic \emph{Sargassum} were satellite tracked in four regions across the North Atlantic. Though subjected to the same initial conditions at each site, the tracks of…
The statistics of Lagrangian pair dispersion in a homogeneous isotropic flow is investigated by means of direct numerical simulations. The focus is on deviations from Richardson eddy-diffusivity model and in particular on the strong…
Water current prediction is essential for understanding ecosystems, and to shed light on the role of the ocean in the global climate context. Solutions vary from physical modeling, and long-term observations, to short-term measurements. In…
Tracers in a turbulent flow separate according to the celebrated $t^{3/2}$ Richardson--Obukhov law, which is usually explained by a scale-dependent effective diffusivity. Here, supported by state-of-the-art numerics, we revisit this…