19 July - 21 August 1999
Friday Harbor Laboratories
Pictures
| Ferry coming out of the fog | Pictures taken in a lightning storm | lightning pic 2 | lightning pic 3 |
The course ended on August 20, with lectures by the two student teams, beer and burritos, and much cleaning and packing of vans. The report of the summer's research should be up on this page by September 8th or so. We are accumulating images and even videos of Cattle Pass which will soon appear. The San Juan Channel data will appear here and can be ftp'd from the site. Thanks to all! It was a good summer. Peter Rhines
Fall 2000: Poster and further discussion, photo gallery and links from Frank Gerdes and Tetjana Ross summarising tidal mixing component of course (see below for full reports).
See Updates below (9 vii 99, 20 v 99, 18 iv 99, 1 iv 99)
99 lecture schedule
| 7/19 | A.M. | Rhines: Tidal lore, Monismith: Estuaries, Newton: Biology |
| 7/20 | A.M. | Monismith: Equations of motion, The long box, Rhines: Potential Vorticity and geostrophic flow |
| 7/20 | P.M. | Farmer: Fjords and sill dynamics, Klymak: Knight inlet |
| 7/21 | A.M. | Monismith: Physical ideas, basic turbulent flows and equations, Rhines: Ekman layers and benethic boundaries |
| 7/21 | P.M. | Farmer: LCs and bubbles, Lee: Mixing and fronts |
| 7/22 | Field | Barnes departs |
| 7/23 | Field | Field, end week 1 |
| 7/26 | Field | Barnes returns, begin week 2 |
| 7/27 | A.M. | Flows in estuaries; Pawlowicz: Washington and B.C. Fjords |
| 7/27 | P.M. | Dekshenieks and Donaghey: East Sound/Thin layers |
| 7/28 | Field | Field |
| 7/29 | A.M. | Geyer: Salt balance |
| 7/29 | P.M. | Andy Heard: SeaBird, Drift cards(look out!) |
| 7/30 | A.M. | Field |
| 7/30 | P.M. | Jay: Climatology of estuaries, Geyer: The Fraser and fronts |
| 8/2 | Field | Begin week 3, field |
| 8/3 | A.M. | Hickey: Large-scale coastal dynamics, Garrett: Tides and the response of straits |
| 8/3 | P.M. | Rhines: Coastally trapped long waves and upwelling, Hickey: Upwelling Observations |
| 8/4 | A.M. | Garrett: Mixing the top and bottom boundaries, Hickey: Observations of river plumes |
| 8/11 | A.M. | Powell: NPZ model of upwelling, Rhines:Shelf boundary layers |
| 8/11 | P.M. | Fong: River Plumes |
| 8/12 | A.M. | Warner: Tracers and circulation, Cannon: Puget Sound circulation, Juan de Fuca strait |
| 8/12 | P.M. | Kawase: Modeling Puget Sound |
| 8/13 | A.M. | Monismith: SIPS in partially mixed estuaries, Klymak: Sill flow, Lee: Fronts |
| 8/16 | A.M. | MacCready: Theory of estuarine dynamics, Pawlak: Mixing in stratified fluids |
Final Summer Reports
Chlorophyll during late spring bloom round Tasmania (27xi1981), 1 km
resolution (Courtesy of
CZCS/SeaWiFS projects)
Stephen Monismith, Dir., Environmental Fluid Dynamics Lab, Stanford
University
Peter Rhines, Prof. of Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences,
University of Washington
Craig Lee, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of
Washington
Supported by Friday Harbor Laboratories and
School of Oceanography, UW
Dean's Office, College of Ocean and Fishery Sciences, UW
Office of Naval Research
Puget Sound Regional Synthesis Model (PRISM) at UW
Joint Institute for Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO) at UW
Laboratory simulation of tidal flow in estuary (P.MacCready, GFD lab
UW)
COURSE UPDATE (by P.Rhines): 9 July 1999
It's been very busy but we are converging on 19 July, and look forward to meeting all the students. The
list of visiting sages has grown, and is indeed exciting. The Senior Staff of 5 is Stephen Monismith,
Peter Rhines, Craig Lee, Derek Fong and Jody Klymak. They will be lecturing along
with the visitors. Here is the visitor schedule as it now stands:
WEEK 1....July 19
.......... MON...........TUES..........WEDS...........THURS.........FRI
...............David Farmer
...............Jan
Newton..........................................................................1/2 the
class
...............Rocky Geyer.........................................................................to
Steveston,
BC
...............Jen Zamon...........................................................................to
join
R/V
Barnes
.........................................................................................................in
Fraser River plume
WEEK 2 July 26
=====================spring tide!===================
..........Rich Pawlowicz.......Barnes group
...........David Jay................returns
...........Rocky Geyer
...........Margaret Dekshenis
...........Percy Donahey
WEEK 3 August 2
...........Chris Garrett
...........Barbara Hickey
...........Rocky Geyer
WEEK 4 August 9
=====================spring tide!=================
...........Glenn Cannon
...........Mitsuhiro Kawase
...........Mark Warner
...........Tom Powell
WEEK 5 August 16
...........Geno Pawlak......................................student project lectures.......Clean up!
...........Parker MacCready
Our current ensemble of instruments includes a Seabird SBE-19 ctd with oxygen, chlorophyll and particle
scattering, some OS-200 ctd's, 300MHz and 600 MHz acoustic Doppler current profilers, 5 GPS surface
drifters from Barbara Hickey and calibration equipment for oxygen samples.
COURSE UPDATE (by P.Rhines): 20 May 1999
We are pleased that Derek Fong of Stanford, who works as a post-doc with Stephen Monismith, will
be helping as part of the senior staff of the course. Outfitting of the new 22' boat for the course
is going well. The boat is capable of 25 knots, and if you look at a chart of the San Juan Islands,
this puts many interesting sites within 20 minutes 'steaming'. Rich Pawlowicz of U.British Columbia
visited us again recently, and his work in Haro Strait gives us good background on the problem of
Georgia Strait's communication with the Pacific. Haro Strait is the deepest 'basin' in the region
(exceeding 300m), and Rich's sections there show interesting tidal interaction with the
stratification and the several sills.
We are fortunate that one of the students, Wayne Martin, has a 22' boat which may be able
to take part in the field work. This would give us use of two boats, full-time, so that more than 1/2
the class can be on the water at one time (occasional use of the two other FHL boats is also
possible).
Instrumentation will focus on lowered ctd (for temperature and salinity) and underway adcp
velocity measurements. One of the ctd's will have chlorophyll fluorometry and particle scattering
measurements (at present we don't have a sensor for dissolved oxygen). There will likely be
differential GPS measurements for precise positioning (and so as not go be lost in the fog). On
occasion Barbara Hickey's GPS drifters will be available, which give an unequalled picture of 'where
the water goes'. We may manage to set some moorings (with adcp and perhaps temp/salinity) before and
during the course. This would be a good experience for everyone, and time-series observations at
fixed points are very valuable.
During the course we have dominant spring (i.e., strong) tide periods during weeks 2 (25-30 July)
and week 4 (9-12 August). We are just coming down off the prior spring tide at the beginning of the
course. These should be particularly good times to be in the field.
As you can see there will also be a full program of lectures...no homework or exams though.
Students will be divided into small 'teams' (probably 3 to 4 people on each), to concentrate on a
research problem for the 5 weeks. During the final week each team will make a presentation (and
write it up). Scheduling may be tricky, but this lecture activity is really of key importance, as
we have attracted some of the best senior visitors in the world!
The final student list follows:
Neil Banas (UW)
Jeremy Bricker (Stanford)
Glenn Carter (UW)
Frank Gerdes (U.Victoria)
Alex Horner (Stanford)
Satoshi Inagaki (Stanford)
Yoshie Kasajima (Norwegian College of Fishery)
Daniel MacDonald (Woods Hole O.I./MIT Joint Program)
Wayne Martin (UW)
Elizabeth Nelson (Stanford)
Tetjana Ross (U.Victoria)
Brian Scansen (UW)
Rachel Simons (Stanford)
Cary Troy (Stanford)
Mathew Wells (Australian National University)
Finally, if anyone has lots of spare time there is good background reading to be done (both on
coasts and estuaries, and basic dynamics). I will start a bibliography for you shortly...check back
here in a week or two. Gill's Atmosphere/Ocean Dynamics (Academic Press, 1982) is a good place to
brush up on basic GFD, and I like very much Acheson's Elemetary Fluid Dynamics, a terse account of
classical (non rotating, unstratified) fluid dynamics. AND BRUSH UP ON YOUR MATLAB SKILLS! If you
haven't used Matlab, try to get access to it, or read the manuals. It is more or less identical on
pc's, MacIntoshes, and in Unix, and data files can be shifted between these platforms. We are
beginning to get some datasets together, which will be put into Matlab arrays; version 5 or later, of
Matlab allows multi-dimensional structured arrays, so that data can be beautifully organized and
self-describing. NetCDF is another data format that is common in oceanography, and Matlab can now
read these data files.
COURSE UPDATE: 18 April 1999
Admission of students is complete...now we need to hear back from admitted students
that they are in fact coming! We expect a diverse group from as far as Australia,
Norway and Chile, as well as a healthy number from Woods Hole, Scripps, Univ. of
Washington and Stanford.
In Friday Harbor, this Friday, I visited our lab (#4 if you look a the Friday
Harbor web site), which is well set up for the course, with blackboards for lecturing
(there are lecture halls as well) and counters for computers. It currently has
seawater aquaria which will mostly be removed (though in my last course on climate
dynamics we kept an aquarium going all summer, a good diversion).
The new 22' boat is now being outfitted for the course with electric winch and
mounts for underway adcp's. On occasion, for example when chasing gps drifters, we may
want to field 2 or 3 boats, which is possible. The boat is fast (25 knots) and can
reach Eastsound or Stuart Island in 20 minutes...these are two of our possible sites.
Accommodations for our large number of visitors has been challenging, but we have
now secured a 3 BR condominum near the ferry in the village for this purpose.
Incidentally, bicycle is a good form of transport on the island; we will have a couple
of ancient cycles for lending; particularly keen cyclists might want to bring their
own.
The course by nature will involve some local oceanography of the region, but
we hope to keep the lectures general and basic...starting with principles of gfd and
applying them to commonly found types of coastal and estuary region.
The hardware tools to be used in the field involve principally lowered ctd or
Seacat, underway adcp (acoustic Doppler current profiler), moored adcp, and gps
driters loaned by Barbara Hickey. Stephen Monismith may also have a towed sled with
fluorometer. It is important to have some biological variables, for that is to some
extent the reason for doing the physical oceanography.
There are many details; with navigation for instance, we can now use differential
gps which gives location to within roughly 5m. These can be connected to a pc with
electronic charts, and thus the surveys planned and recorded on the computer.
COURSE UPDATE: 1 April 1999
Planning for the course is going very well. We have secured a computing network of
Pentium pcs with Linux, which will have Matlab and other software for looking at
data. We hope to have a good number of hydrography and velocity datasets online at the
beginning of the course, and these will be a part of the teaching process.
We have arranged for the R/V Barnes from UW's School of Oceanography (a 65' coastal
research vessel) to work for 4 days during the beginning of the course in the Fraser River
plume. David Jay will lead this effort, which will involve roughly 7 of the students
(chosen by lottery!).
The field work in small boats is an important part of the course, and on
good weather days we may have to sacrifice lecturing, but lectures are
very much at the core of the activity. FHL is outfitting a new 22'
aluminum boat and there are two other craft at FHL. Basic ctd and adcp
work will occur, plus whatever other sensors we can get together. Barbara
Hickey is offering some gps surface drifters for us to use.
We have succeeded in getting funding for the course from FHL, the School of Oceanography
at UW, the Office of Naval Research, the PRISM (Puget Sound Regional Synthesis Model)
project at UW, and JISAO (Joint Institute for Study of Atmosphere and Ocean) at UW.
Some of the principals, visitors and lecture topics:
Stephen Monismith; about 10 basic course lectures during the 5 weeks,
including likely some hydraulics, boundary layer turbulence and basic
rotating, stratified flow gfd.
Peter Rhines: basic gfd of waves and mean flows,
possibly spinup processes and boundary layers. Also several lab
experiments/demos involving estuaries (Parker MacCready's model), rotating waves and
boundary layers, stratified spin-up.
Craig Lee (APL, UW): Batfish view of the upper ocean; mixed layer processes
Jody Klymak (UW, our trusty TA): hydraulics and entrainment in a tidal sill flow (Knight Inlet)
David Farmer (U. Victoria, visiting week 1): Internal hydraulic controls in straits and
channels;
possibly also bubbles, upper mixed layer and air/sea gas transfer
Chris Garrett (U. Victoria, visiting week 3): tides, rectification and boundary mixing (also Juan
de
Fuca Strait dynamics?).
Rocky Geyer (Woods Hole O.I., visiting weeks 1 to 3): estuaries; also secondary flows and
frontogenesis
Barbara Hickey (U.W., visiting week 3): larger scale coastal dynamics, river
plumes,
canyons.
David Jay (Oregon Grad. Inst., leading Fraser River work and visiting week 2): estuaries and river
plumes...hot off the press from his
summer in the Fraser and Columbia rivers [David will be taking some of our
class on the Barnes for 4 days, 23-26 July in the Fraser plume.]
Glenn Cannon (UW, PMEL Emeritus, visiting week 4); observational studies of Puget Sound, San
Juans, offshore Washington
Mitsuhiro Kawase (UW, visiting week 4); a 3D numerical model of a complex estuary (Puget Sound)
Rich Pawlowicz (U. British Columbia, visiting week 2); dynamics of a large tidal strait and sill
system (Haro Strait)
Some sites now under consideration for field work:
-Eastsound, Orcas Isl. where the 'thin layers' experiment sees
fine-scale layers of intense phytoplankton, boundary mixing and the
intense 'wind-chute' there may be involved;
-Cattle Pass where nutrient rich deep water from Juan de Fuca Strait
upwells on the flood tide and sets off the whole trophic chain;
-Island wakes/vortex production and tilting by Stuart Island;
-Hydraulics at sills in Haro Strait;
-Fraser River/Skagit River plumes (seaward ends thereof).
-We might try to make time-lapse videos from the
top of Mt. Constitution where we have seen undular bore slicks propagating
along the north side of Orcas Isl. Rich Pawlowicz has similar thoughts for
Mt. Dallas on the west side of San Juan Isl.
-Admiralty Inlet is a magnificent sill flow (traces visible even from
an airplane), but a bit far away. We may make a special Nugget
excursion, staying overnight in Port Townsend.
{End course update}
Estuaries and the coastal ocean involve many basic processes of
fluid dynamics, which will be examined in lectures, laboratory
experiments, and with direct field observations. Northern Puget Sound,
the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the San Juan Islands and the plumes of the
Fraser and Skagit Rivers present a rich environment of stratified
hydraulics, sill flows, tidal mixing, waves, estuarine circulation,
river-plume fronts and mixed-layer dynamics. Depths to 300m occur in the
glacially shaped nearby straits and fjords, where intense tidal flows
(4m tidal range) occur.
This post-graduate course will consist of regular lectures by the
principal staff, as well as by numerous visiting scientists. We will
have working indoor fluids lab experiments and outdoor field work with
small vessels, using state-of-the-art instrumentation (acoustic Doppler
current profilers, fast ctd, GPS drifters). Students will be involved in
projects involving one or more of these resources. The course centers
on physical dynamics, but there will be numerous encounters with
biology, chemistry involving one or more of these resources. The course
centers on physical dynamics, but there will be numerous encounters with
biology, chemistry and geology of the region through our visiting
lecturers and Friday Harbor colleagues.
Friday Harbor Laboratories are operated by the University of
Washington, at a 484-acre nature preserve on the coast of San Juan
Island. It is a fine natural setting with much wild-life and
opportunities for kayaking, hiking and cycling. The ecology of the
region will blend with the summer course, as marine sanctuaries and
preserves are in need of physical oceanographic surveying and
understanding.
Among our senior visitors will be Glenn Cannon (PMEL), David Farmer
(IOS-BC), Chris Garrett (U Victoria), Rocky Geyer (WHOI), Barbara Hickey
(UW), David Jay (OGI), Mitsuhiro Kawase (UW), Parker MacCready (UW),
Geno Pawlak (UW) and Mark Warner (UW).
Prerequisites: A thorough course in fluid dynamics (preferably with
geophysical fluids as well). We anticipate that most of the students
will be physical oceanographers, but graduate students from chemical,
biological or geophysical oceanography may apply if they have had
significant exposure to fluid dynamics.
Enrollment: 15 graduate students; we anticipate some scholarship
assistance may be available. Tuition, travel and expenses will normally
be born by the student's home institution, but some fellowship and
external support will be available on application.
Deadline: Student applications are due at Friday Harbor Laboratories by
1 March 1999, but we would enjoy hearing from interested candidates before
that time. If you are late by not too many days, there is still a chance
that we could consider your application. The number of applicants
generally exceeds 15, and students will be selected on the basis of their
background and references. Check the web-sites for more information.
Course credit: This is a 9-credit graduate course, reflecting the
intensive nature of the activity; credits may be transferrable to
institutions other than University of Washington.
Enquiries: Peter Rhines (rhines@ocean.washington.edu)
and Stephen
Monismith (monismit@cive.stanford.edu)
Links:
- Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab,
University of Washington
- Friday Harbor Laboratories
- Web Directory for San Juan
Island
- School of Oceanography, University of
Washington
Related Websites:
Friday Harbor course home page
Stephen Monismith
Peter Rhines
Craig Lee
Senior Visitors:
Glenn Cannon
David Farmer
Chris Garrett
Rocky Geyer
Barbara Hickey
David Jay
Mitsuhiro Kawase
Parker MacCready
Jan Newton
Rich Pawlowicz
Mark Warner
CSIRO Marine Lab, Hobart Australia
Eindhoven Netherlands fluid dyn. lab
Moss Landing Marine Labs
Oregon State Univ. Coastal Oceanog.
Scripps Inst. of Oceanog. Coastal Res. Cent.
Southampton Ocean. Cent. UK
Stanford Univ. Environ. fluid dyn. lab
Univ. So. Calif. GFD lab
Univ. of Cambridge fluid dyn. lab
Univ. of Victoria - Haro Strait experiment
Univ. of Washington GFD lab
Univ. of Western Australia Centre for Water Res.
WHOI Coastal fluid dyn. lab
CAMREX Amazon River project Univ. of Washington
Coastal Mixing and Optics experiment
Knight Inlet experiment
PRISM project Univ. of Washington
SeaWiFS ocean color images/hurricanes
zebra mussels as reservoirs for giardia
tides at Port Townsend
Dalhousie Univ. ocean hot list
National Ocean. Data Center
NODC ocean data locator
The phytoplankton concentrations around the island of Tasmania as seen in
this image acquired by the CZCS on 27 November 1981 (here and at top of document), are
one of the most remarkable
demonstrations of the
complexity of oceanic circulation patterns in the ocean and of the relationship
between physical processes and
biological production. The high pigment on the shelf may represent a late or
second-stage spring bloom. The
highest biomass offshore tends to occur in narrow strips. Field investigations and
AVHRR imagery show
that mesoscale stirring creates extensive meandering fronts between nutrient-stripped
subtropical water
and deeply mixed, nutrient-rich subantarctic water. Along these fronts, subtropical
water cools and slips
under subantarctic water, creating a nutrient rich stable surface layer. Intense
blooms form in these
frontal zones which are of major importance to the fisheries of the region. Courtesy
of SeaWifs project, NASA.
Laboratory simulation of rotating convective vortices due to cold patch
(P.Rhines, GFD lab
UW)
Html and Javascript by Andrew Rhines
Chlorophyll during late spring bloom round Tasmania (27xi1981), 1 km resolution (Courtesy of CZCS/SeaWiFS projects)
Stephen Monismith, Dir., Environmental Fluid Dynamics Lab, Stanford
University
Peter Rhines, Prof. of Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences,
University of Washington
Craig Lee, Applied Physics Laboratory, University of
Washington
Supported by Friday Harbor Laboratories and
Laboratory simulation of tidal flow in estuary (P.MacCready, GFD lab UW)
It's been very busy but we are converging on 19 July, and look forward to meeting all the students. The list of visiting sages has grown, and is indeed exciting. The Senior Staff of 5 is Stephen Monismith, Peter Rhines, Craig Lee, Derek Fong and Jody Klymak. They will be lecturing along with the visitors. Here is the visitor schedule as it now stands:
WEEK 1....July 19 .......... MON...........TUES..........WEDS...........THURS.........FRI
...............David Farmer
...............Jan Newton..........................................................................1/2 the class
...............Rocky Geyer.........................................................................to Steveston, BC
...............Jen Zamon...........................................................................to join R/V Barnes
.........................................................................................................in Fraser River plume
WEEK 2 July 26
=====================spring tide!===================
..........Rich Pawlowicz.......Barnes group
...........David Jay................returns
...........Rocky Geyer
...........Margaret Dekshenis
...........Percy Donahey
WEEK 3 August 2
...........Chris Garrett
...........Barbara Hickey
...........Rocky Geyer
WEEK 4 August 9
=====================spring tide!=================
...........Glenn Cannon
...........Mitsuhiro Kawase
...........Mark Warner
...........Tom Powell
WEEK 5 August 16
...........Geno Pawlak......................................student project lectures.......Clean up!
...........Parker MacCready
Our current ensemble of instruments includes a Seabird SBE-19 ctd with oxygen, chlorophyll and particle scattering, some OS-200 ctd's, 300MHz and 600 MHz acoustic Doppler current profilers, 5 GPS surface drifters from Barbara Hickey and calibration equipment for oxygen samples.
We are pleased that Derek Fong of Stanford, who works as a post-doc with Stephen Monismith, will be helping as part of the senior staff of the course. Outfitting of the new 22' boat for the course is going well. The boat is capable of 25 knots, and if you look at a chart of the San Juan Islands, this puts many interesting sites within 20 minutes 'steaming'. Rich Pawlowicz of U.British Columbia visited us again recently, and his work in Haro Strait gives us good background on the problem of Georgia Strait's communication with the Pacific. Haro Strait is the deepest 'basin' in the region (exceeding 300m), and Rich's sections there show interesting tidal interaction with the stratification and the several sills.
We are fortunate that one of the students, Wayne Martin, has a 22' boat which may be able to take part in the field work. This would give us use of two boats, full-time, so that more than 1/2 the class can be on the water at one time (occasional use of the two other FHL boats is also possible).
Instrumentation will focus on lowered ctd (for temperature and salinity) and underway adcp velocity measurements. One of the ctd's will have chlorophyll fluorometry and particle scattering measurements (at present we don't have a sensor for dissolved oxygen). There will likely be differential GPS measurements for precise positioning (and so as not go be lost in the fog). On occasion Barbara Hickey's GPS drifters will be available, which give an unequalled picture of 'where the water goes'. We may manage to set some moorings (with adcp and perhaps temp/salinity) before and during the course. This would be a good experience for everyone, and time-series observations at fixed points are very valuable.
During the course we have dominant spring (i.e., strong) tide periods during weeks 2 (25-30 July) and week 4 (9-12 August). We are just coming down off the prior spring tide at the beginning of the course. These should be particularly good times to be in the field.
As you can see there will also be a full program of lectures...no homework or exams though. Students will be divided into small 'teams' (probably 3 to 4 people on each), to concentrate on a research problem for the 5 weeks. During the final week each team will make a presentation (and write it up). Scheduling may be tricky, but this lecture activity is really of key importance, as we have attracted some of the best senior visitors in the world!
Neil Banas (UW)
Jeremy Bricker (Stanford)
Glenn Carter (UW)
Frank Gerdes (U.Victoria)
Alex Horner (Stanford)
Satoshi Inagaki (Stanford)
Yoshie Kasajima (Norwegian College of Fishery)
Daniel MacDonald (Woods Hole O.I./MIT Joint Program)
Wayne Martin (UW)
Elizabeth Nelson (Stanford)
Tetjana Ross (U.Victoria)
Brian Scansen (UW)
Rachel Simons (Stanford)
Cary Troy (Stanford)
Mathew Wells (Australian National University)
Finally, if anyone has lots of spare time there is good background reading to be done (both on coasts and estuaries, and basic dynamics). I will start a bibliography for you shortly...check back here in a week or two. Gill's Atmosphere/Ocean Dynamics (Academic Press, 1982) is a good place to brush up on basic GFD, and I like very much Acheson's Elemetary Fluid Dynamics, a terse account of classical (non rotating, unstratified) fluid dynamics. AND BRUSH UP ON YOUR MATLAB SKILLS! If you haven't used Matlab, try to get access to it, or read the manuals. It is more or less identical on pc's, MacIntoshes, and in Unix, and data files can be shifted between these platforms. We are beginning to get some datasets together, which will be put into Matlab arrays; version 5 or later, of Matlab allows multi-dimensional structured arrays, so that data can be beautifully organized and self-describing. NetCDF is another data format that is common in oceanography, and Matlab can now read these data files.
Admission of students is complete...now we need to hear back from admitted students that they are in fact coming! We expect a diverse group from as far as Australia, Norway and Chile, as well as a healthy number from Woods Hole, Scripps, Univ. of Washington and Stanford. In Friday Harbor, this Friday, I visited our lab (#4 if you look a the Friday Harbor web site), which is well set up for the course, with blackboards for lecturing (there are lecture halls as well) and counters for computers. It currently has seawater aquaria which will mostly be removed (though in my last course on climate dynamics we kept an aquarium going all summer, a good diversion).
The new 22' boat is now being outfitted for the course with electric winch and mounts for underway adcp's. On occasion, for example when chasing gps drifters, we may want to field 2 or 3 boats, which is possible. The boat is fast (25 knots) and can reach Eastsound or Stuart Island in 20 minutes...these are two of our possible sites.
Accommodations for our large number of visitors has been challenging, but we have now secured a 3 BR condominum near the ferry in the village for this purpose. Incidentally, bicycle is a good form of transport on the island; we will have a couple of ancient cycles for lending; particularly keen cyclists might want to bring their own.
The course by nature will involve some local oceanography of the region, but we hope to keep the lectures general and basic...starting with principles of gfd and applying them to commonly found types of coastal and estuary region.
The hardware tools to be used in the field involve principally lowered ctd or Seacat, underway adcp (acoustic Doppler current profiler), moored adcp, and gps driters loaned by Barbara Hickey. Stephen Monismith may also have a towed sled with fluorometer. It is important to have some biological variables, for that is to some extent the reason for doing the physical oceanography.
There are many details; with navigation for instance, we can now use differential gps which gives location to within roughly 5m. These can be connected to a pc with electronic charts, and thus the surveys planned and recorded on the computer.
Planning for the course is going very well. We have secured a computing network of Pentium pcs with Linux, which will have Matlab and other software for looking at data. We hope to have a good number of hydrography and velocity datasets online at the beginning of the course, and these will be a part of the teaching process.
We have arranged for the R/V Barnes from UW's School of Oceanography (a 65' coastal research vessel) to work for 4 days during the beginning of the course in the Fraser River plume. David Jay will lead this effort, which will involve roughly 7 of the students (chosen by lottery!).
The field work in small boats is an important part of the course, and on good weather days we may have to sacrifice lecturing, but lectures are very much at the core of the activity. FHL is outfitting a new 22' aluminum boat and there are two other craft at FHL. Basic ctd and adcp work will occur, plus whatever other sensors we can get together. Barbara Hickey is offering some gps surface drifters for us to use.
We have succeeded in getting funding for the course from FHL, the School of Oceanography at UW, the Office of Naval Research, the PRISM (Puget Sound Regional Synthesis Model) project at UW, and JISAO (Joint Institute for Study of Atmosphere and Ocean) at UW.
Some sites now under consideration for field work:
-Eastsound, Orcas Isl. where the 'thin layers' experiment sees fine-scale layers of intense phytoplankton, boundary mixing and the intense 'wind-chute' there may be involved;
-Cattle Pass where nutrient rich deep water from Juan de Fuca Strait upwells on the flood tide and sets off the whole trophic chain;
-Island wakes/vortex production and tilting by Stuart Island;
-Hydraulics at sills in Haro Strait;
-Fraser River/Skagit River plumes (seaward ends thereof).
-We might try to make time-lapse videos from the top of Mt. Constitution where we have seen undular bore slicks propagating along the north side of Orcas Isl. Rich Pawlowicz has similar thoughts for Mt. Dallas on the west side of San Juan Isl.
-Admiralty Inlet is a magnificent sill flow (traces visible even from an airplane), but a bit far away. We may make a special Nugget excursion, staying overnight in Port Townsend.
Estuaries and the coastal ocean involve many basic processes of fluid dynamics, which will be examined in lectures, laboratory experiments, and with direct field observations. Northern Puget Sound, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the San Juan Islands and the plumes of the Fraser and Skagit Rivers present a rich environment of stratified hydraulics, sill flows, tidal mixing, waves, estuarine circulation, river-plume fronts and mixed-layer dynamics. Depths to 300m occur in the glacially shaped nearby straits and fjords, where intense tidal flows (4m tidal range) occur.
This post-graduate course will consist of regular lectures by the principal staff, as well as by numerous visiting scientists. We will have working indoor fluids lab experiments and outdoor field work with small vessels, using state-of-the-art instrumentation (acoustic Doppler current profilers, fast ctd, GPS drifters). Students will be involved in projects involving one or more of these resources. The course centers on physical dynamics, but there will be numerous encounters with biology, chemistry involving one or more of these resources. The course centers on physical dynamics, but there will be numerous encounters with biology, chemistry and geology of the region through our visiting lecturers and Friday Harbor colleagues.
Friday Harbor Laboratories are operated by the University of Washington, at a 484-acre nature preserve on the coast of San Juan Island. It is a fine natural setting with much wild-life and opportunities for kayaking, hiking and cycling. The ecology of the region will blend with the summer course, as marine sanctuaries and preserves are in need of physical oceanographic surveying and understanding.
Among our senior visitors will be Glenn Cannon (PMEL), David Farmer (IOS-BC), Chris Garrett (U Victoria), Rocky Geyer (WHOI), Barbara Hickey (UW), David Jay (OGI), Mitsuhiro Kawase (UW), Parker MacCready (UW), Geno Pawlak (UW) and Mark Warner (UW).
Prerequisites: A thorough course in fluid dynamics (preferably with geophysical fluids as well). We anticipate that most of the students will be physical oceanographers, but graduate students from chemical, biological or geophysical oceanography may apply if they have had significant exposure to fluid dynamics.
Enrollment: 15 graduate students; we anticipate some scholarship assistance may be available. Tuition, travel and expenses will normally be born by the student's home institution, but some fellowship and external support will be available on application.
Deadline: Student applications are due at Friday Harbor Laboratories by 1 March 1999, but we would enjoy hearing from interested candidates before that time. If you are late by not too many days, there is still a chance that we could consider your application. The number of applicants generally exceeds 15, and students will be selected on the basis of their background and references. Check the web-sites for more information.
Course credit: This is a 9-credit graduate course, reflecting the intensive nature of the activity; credits may be transferrable to institutions other than University of Washington.
Enquiries: Peter Rhines (rhines@ocean.washington.edu) and Stephen Monismith (monismit@cive.stanford.edu)
Links:
- Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab,
University of Washington
- Friday Harbor Laboratories
- Web Directory for San Juan
Island
- School of Oceanography, University of
Washington
Related Websites:
Friday Harbor course home page
Stephen Monismith
Peter Rhines
Craig Lee
Senior Visitors:
Glenn Cannon
David Farmer
Chris Garrett
Rocky Geyer
Barbara Hickey
David Jay
Mitsuhiro Kawase
Parker MacCready
Jan Newton
Rich Pawlowicz
Mark Warner
CSIRO Marine Lab, Hobart Australia
Eindhoven Netherlands fluid dyn. lab
Moss Landing Marine Labs
Oregon State Univ. Coastal Oceanog.
Scripps Inst. of Oceanog. Coastal Res. Cent.
Southampton Ocean. Cent. UK
Stanford Univ. Environ. fluid dyn. lab
Univ. So. Calif. GFD lab
Univ. of Cambridge fluid dyn. lab
Univ. of Victoria - Haro Strait experiment
Univ. of Washington GFD lab
Univ. of Western Australia Centre for Water Res.
WHOI Coastal fluid dyn. lab
CAMREX Amazon River project Univ. of Washington
Coastal Mixing and Optics experiment
Knight Inlet experiment
PRISM project Univ. of Washington
SeaWiFS ocean color images/hurricanes
zebra mussels as reservoirs for giardia
tides at Port Townsend
Dalhousie Univ. ocean hot list
National Ocean. Data Center
NODC ocean data locator
The phytoplankton concentrations around the island of Tasmania as seen in this image acquired by the CZCS on 27 November 1981 (here and at top of document), are one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the complexity of oceanic circulation patterns in the ocean and of the relationship between physical processes and biological production. The high pigment on the shelf may represent a late or second-stage spring bloom. The highest biomass offshore tends to occur in narrow strips. Field investigations and AVHRR imagery show that mesoscale stirring creates extensive meandering fronts between nutrient-stripped subtropical water and deeply mixed, nutrient-rich subantarctic water. Along these fronts, subtropical water cools and slips under subantarctic water, creating a nutrient rich stable surface layer. Intense blooms form in these frontal zones which are of major importance to the fisheries of the region. Courtesy of SeaWifs project, NASA.
Laboratory simulation of rotating convective vortices due to cold patch (P.Rhines, GFD lab UW)
Html and Javascript by Andrew Rhines