Feedbacks on extreme storms by ocean turbulent mixing

General Information

The project uses autonomous underwater ocean glider vehicles with a newly developed airborne deployment system to measure ocean turbulence in extreme storms, such as hurricanes, typhoons, and tropical storms. These are expected to lead to a new understanding and improved estimates of the ocean mixing that is responsible for setting upper ocean temperatures - a crucial and poorly constrained feedback on storm intensity. By combining the observations with turbulence-resolving large eddy simulations, performed on high performance computational clusters, a new observationally-constrained model of the ocean-storm mixing feedback will be constructed that fills a much needed gap in the coupling of extreme storms to the ocean. This is crucial since extreme storms are increasing in strength and frequency through climate change and are leading to record damages and loss of life in coastal communities. Such measurements are only now possible with the use of microstructure turbulence measurements from autonomous underwater gliders, particularly in stormy conditions. The final outcomes of the project will consist of (i) an airborne deployment system for the study of extreme events using autonomous vehicles, (ii) the first vertically-resolved observations of upper ocean turbulence and mixing in extreme storms, (iii) a sequence of turbulence-resolving numerical simulations that, together with the observations, will identify and quantify processes responsible for setting upper ocean heat fluxes and turbulent structure in extreme storms, and (iv) a new parameterisation for ocean mixing in extreme storms that quantifies the ocean-storm feedback, and its implementation.
This is a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant for Dr. Jeffrey Carpenter, hosted by Hereon.

EU-Programme Acronym and Subprogramme Area	ERC-2022-COG
Project Type	ERC Consolidator Grant
Contract Number	Grant Agreement 101088555
Co-ordinator	Hereon (DE)

Funding for the Project (€)	Funding for Hereon (€)
2,346,039	2,346,039

Contact Person at Hereon

Dr. Jeffrey Carpenter, Institute of Coastal Ocean Dynamics, Department of Small-scale Physics and Turbulence, KDT, phone +49 4152 87 1546 E-mail contact

Participants

Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon (DE)

Last Update: 22. March 2024