(photo by Jennifer Fandrich)
Walter Munk, in his famous "abyssal recipies", showed more than half a century ago that the strength of the global overturning circulation is closely linked to diapycnal mixing. Since then, oceanographic research has succeeded in identifying more and more processes generating the mixing required to drive the global overturning circulation: internal-wave mixing, boundary mixing, wake eddies, gravity currents, double diffusion, and many more. The same dependence was also observed in other marine systems at smaller scales, including marginal and semi-enclosed seas and estuaries. Mixing and circulation were shown to be closely related even at the smallest scales of individual frontal structures (e.g., in surface-layer fronts and filaments), where mixing triggers a secondary circulation that may feed back on the structure of these features. Numerical models used to describe the above mechanisms often include discretization errors that become evident in particular in the form of spurious "numerical" mixing, which may trigger artificial circulation patterns at all scales.
For the 11th Warnemünde Turbulence Days, we therefore invite presentations discussing all aspects of mixing in the ocean, especially, however, those that focus on the relation of mixing and circulation at all relevant scales.
Invited speakers:
Matthew Alford (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, USA)
Manita Chouksey (University of Bremen, Germany)
Julie Pietrzak (Technical University of Delft, The Netherlands)
Kurt Polzin (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, USA)
Fabien Roquet (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
Sebastiaan Swart (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
