Field Connections
 
 
    The fluids lab has much in common with work in the field. We have combined a course at Friday Harbor Laboratories in coastal oceanography (www.ocean.washington.edu/research/gfd/Ocean590.html) with lab demonstrations, such as the estuary model above. Working with instrumentation, data massaging and analysis and image analysis are common to both, and several of the 15 students were lab specialists.
 

  

San Juan Channel; tidal hydraulics and stirring. Our Friday Harbor summer course in Coastal and Estuarine Geophysical Fluid Dynamics involved 15 graduate students and two boats outfitted with CTDs, acoustic-Doppler current profilers, and GPS surface drifters. The violent tidal flows in the region are the stirring rod that drives the estuary circulation (river outflow above ocean inflow) on the large scale. The right-hand view shows the tide flooding north past Turn Island, with Georgia Strait far in the distance. This is the middle one of three main channels connecting Georgia Strait (and Fraser River water)  with Strait of Juan de Fuca (and the open Pacific Ocean). The estuary lab model, above, show some of the key dynamics at work, and a lecturing program on estuary/coastal dynamics filled out the 5-week course (Peter Rhines and Stephen Monismith).


 
 
Research boat at Friday Harbor Laboratories.  The 21' "Tin Can" with ADCP at right and excited student group.

  

Current profiles through a tidal cycle. The ADCP transects were combined with CTD sections to diagnose both flow and mixing. Here the tide reverses to flood, frist on the east side of San Juan Channel, and the flood has a jet-like concentration.


 
 

ADCP velocity time series.  As in the figure to the left, velocity profiles at 22m depth through most of a tidal cycle.