Warnemünde Turbulence Days 2011
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(05.09. - 08.09.2011)
"Turbulence and Mixing in Estuaries and Coastal Seas"
The WTD workshops are devoted to the observation, interpretation, and modeling of oceanic turbulence and its interaction with physical and ecosystem parameters. Workshops in this series are held on a biannual basis, and are characterised by their active working atmosphere with a small number of invited speakers, and a comfortable time frame for presentations and discussion. In 2011, the WTD will be organised on the tiny island of Vilm, a nature reserve in the Western Baltic Sea.
During the 2011 workshop, the discussions will be centered around the role of turbulence and mixing in estuaries and coastal seas. A substantial branch of the global freshwater cycle leads from rivers via estuaries and coastal seas to the oceans. The propagation of the freshwater through the salinity range from 0 to 35 is exclusively driven by turbulent mixing, fuelled by the interaction of shear and stratification on various scales.
Many processes are involved on this pathway, such as internal waves, buoyancy-driven flows, salt wedge dynamics, coastal upwelling, and different boundary mixing processes. These turbulent processes are complicated by surface heat fluxes leading to thermal stratification dynamics, including tidal fronts, double diffusive processes, mixed layer entrainment and many more.
To shed more light onto this complex physical environment, presentations of field observations, laboratory and numerical experiments, and theoretical studies from different disciplines (including oceanography, atmospheric sciences, physics and applied math) are invited.
After the positive experience at the 4th WTD in 2009, the first day of the 5th WTD will be dedicated to introductory seminars given by international experts, a procedure that will not only be appreciated by the graduate and PhD students. Days two and three will then be dedicated to scientific presentations by students and experts.