Award Abstract #0320622
Acquisition of Instrumentation for Small-scale Process Studies in the Polar Oceans

NSF Org:	OPP Office of Polar Programs
Initial Amendment Date:	July 29, 2003
Latest Amendment Date:	July 29, 2003
Award Number:	0320622
Award Instrument:	Standard Grant
Program Manager:	Bernhard Lettau OPP Office of Polar Programs OPP Office of Polar Programs
Start Date:	September 1, 2003
Expires:	August 31, 2005 (Estimated)
Awarded Amount to Date:	$101800
Investigator(s):	Laurence Padman padman@esr.org (Principal Investigator)
Sponsor:	Earth and Space Research 2101 Fourth Ave Seattle, WA 98121 206/726-0501
NSF Program(s):	MAJOR RESEARCH INSTRUMENTATION
Field Application(s):
Program Reference Code(s):	OTHR, 0000
Program Element Code(s):	1189

ABSTRACT

This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) award provides for the acquisition of a Vertical Microstructure Profiler (VMP) that will enhance the quantitative investigations of small and microscale processes associated with near-surface mixing in the northern and southern polar oceans. Such processes include mixing where the primary energy source is conversion of barotropic tidal energy to internal tides, dynamics associated with density currents over the shelf break and continental slope, double diffusion, processes such as thermobaricity and cabbeling associated with nonlinearities in the seawater equation of state, and lateral intrusions at ocean fronts. The VMP resolves the smallest scales of ocean variability - on the order of the several centimeters - which cannot be resolved with normally available shipboard instrumentation. These high-resolution observations are essential for computing the vertical eddy diffusivity in the upper ocean, and for assessing and learning how to more effectively parameterize the mixing associated with the velocity shear and the equation-of-state processes.

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