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# gfdl's home page > people > anand gnanadesikan's home page > abstracts

Upper Ocean Physics

As a graduate student I worked intensively on the physics of the ocean mixed layer. My dissertation studied the physics of Langmuir circulation within the oceanic mixed layer. The velocities in the upper ocean have long been assumed to described by a shear profile known as the Ekman Spiral. However, observations of the near-surface shear have shown that the Ekman spiral is almost never observed. As part of my dissertation and a subsequent paper (Gnanadesikan and Weller, J. Phys. Oceanogr., 25,3148-3171) I showed that in the presence of surface gravity waves the Ekman spiral became unstable to Langmuir circulations, two-dimensional vortices roughly aligned with the wind.

I have also worked on measuring surface gravity waves and near-surface currents. Click here to access data from the Acoustic Surface Reverberation Experiment (ASREX).

References

Gnanadesikan, A., Dynamics of Langmuir Circulation in oceanic surface layers , Ph.D. Dissertation, MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Physical Oceanography, WHOI Tech. Rep. 94-23, 354pp, 1994.

Gnanadesikan, A. and R.A. Weller, Structure and variability of the Ekman spiral in the presence of surface gravity waves , J. Phys. Oceanogr. 25:3148-3171, 1995.

Gnanadesikan, A., Modelling the diurnal cycle of carbon monoxide: Sensitivity to physics,chemistry, biology and optics , J. Geophys. Res.,101:12177-12191, 1996.

Gnanadesikan, A., Mixing driven by vertically variable forcing: An application to the case of Langmuir circulation , J. Fluid Mech., 322,81-107,1996.

Plueddemann, A.J., J.A. Smith, D.M. Farmer, R.A. Weller, W.R. Crawford, R. Pinkel, S. Vagle, and A. Gnanadesikan, Structure and variability of Langmuir circulation during the Surface Waves Processes Program , J. Geophys. Res., 101:3525-3543, 1996.

Holt, B., A.K. Liu, H.S. Chen, A. Gnanadesikan, and D.W. Wang, Tracking storm- generated waves in the Northeast Pacific Ocean with ERS-1 Synthetic Apeture Radar Imagery and buoys, J. Geophys. Res. , 103(C4): 7917-7929, 1998.

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Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory

Upper Ocean Physics

Geophysical Fluid
Dynamics Laboratory