University of Rochester Researchers Go ‘Outside of the Box’ to Identify Major Ocean Currents – Is It Up With That?

news7g09/17/2022

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University of Rochester Researchers Go 'Outside of the Box' to Identify Major Ocean Currents - Is It Up With That?

The coarse-grained technique allowed them to quantify for the first time the energy of ocean currents larger than 1,000 km. They found that the strongest energy is the Antarctic Current, which is about 9,000 km . in size

A peer-reviewed publication

ROCHESTER UNIVERSITY

ocean illustration — IMAGE: THIS IMAGE OF BENJAMIN STORER DISCOVERS THE OCEAN CURRENT FROM SANITATE DATA THAT IS VERY LARGE TO CURRENTLY (using gold) can be extracted from the quinoa IN BRAND HUSSEIN. NOTE OF THE MOST ENERGY OF THE CURRENTS – WATERPROOF CIRCUIT CURRENTLY – AT LOWER LEFT. see more
CREDIT: BENJAMIN STORER (ALUIE LAB AT UNIVERSITY ROCHESTER)

First University of Rochester The researchers quantified the energy of ocean currents larger than 1,000 km. In the process, they and their collaborators discovered that the strongest energy current was the Antarctic Antarctic Circuit, which is about 9,000 kilometers in diameter.

The group, led by Hussein Aluieassociate professor of mechanical engineering, used the same coarse granulation technique previously developed by his lab to record the energy transfer at the other end of the scale, during the “vortex killing” process. ” occurs when winds interact with temporary circular currents. size is less than 260 km.

These new results, reported in Nature Communicationsshows how coarse-grained engineering can provide a new window into understanding ocean circulation in all its multi-level complexity, said lead author Benjamin Storer, a research associate at Aluie’s. Complex and turbulent flow group. This gives researchers the opportunity to better understand how ocean currents act as a key regulator of Earth’s climate system.

The research team also includes researchers from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, the University of Liverpool and Princeton University.

Traditionally, researchers interested in climatology and oceanography have selected boxes in the ocean ranging in size from 500 to 1,000 square kilometers. These box regions, thought to represent the global ocean, were then analyzed using a technique called Fourier analysis, Aluie said.

“The problem is, when you pick a box, you limit yourself to analyzing what’s in that box,” says Aluie. “You miss things on a larger scale.

“What we’re saying is, we don’t need a box; We can think outside the box. “

For example, when researchers used coarse-grained techniques to “blur” satellite images of global periodic models, they found that “we get more by dealing with less.” ,” Aluie said. “It allows us to systematically separate different-sized structures of ocean currents.”

He draws an analogy with taking off your eyeglasses, then looks at a very detailed, sharp image. It will appear blurred. But as you look at stronger eyewear in succession, you’ll often be able to spot different patterns at each step that would otherwise be hidden in the details.

In essence, that’s what the researchers allowed it to do: quantify the different structures in ocean currents and their energies “from the smallest, best to the largest scale,” Aluie said. speak.

Aluie credits Storer for further code development and refinement; it has been published so that other researchers can use it.

Other collaborators include Michele Buzzicotti, a research scientist at the University of Rome Tor Vergata; Hemant Khatri, a research associate at the University of Liverpool, and Stephen Griffies, a senior scientist at Princeton.

Support for the project includes funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Energy.