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NSF
00-102 (Replaces NSF
00-12)
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Program NewsPhysical Oceanography
The Physical Oceanography (PO) Program received proposals spanning a broad range of ocean science topics for consideration by the November 1999 and May 2000 panels. At the time of writing, the May 2000 panel has not yet met. Proposals submitted to the November panel and subsequently funded include projects dealing with air-sea interaction, estuarine dynamics, the analysis of data collected during four major open-ocean process studies, projects based on analysis of remotely sensed and float data, several different observational experiments, laboratory work, large and small-scale numerical modeling, and geophysical fluid dynamics. As is unfortunately always the case, a number of promising proposals had to be declined for lack of funds. The funds available in FY 2000 are roughly the same as in FY 1999.
One of the pleasures of being a Program Manager is reading about new
research results, only a short time after they are obtained, in the
annual reports that PIs submit. FastLane provides a flexible way of
including text, graphics and even copies of preprints in one's report
and references to a PI's web site offer yet another way of including
information. As we were writing this article, we received a report from
Eric D'Asaro at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory
and School of Oceanography. During the last hurricane season, with funding
from a Small Grants for Exploratory Research (SGER) award, he successfully
deployed some of his Lagrangian floats ahead of an approaching hurricane
(see figure on page 9). The result was new information on the subsurface
mixing that occurs along a hurricane track and on the way in which this
generates the low sea-surface temperature anomalies that are frequently
seen as a hurricane passes over the ocean in low, subtropical latitudes.
It is hoped that a better quantitative understanding of this process
will lead to improved forecasts of hurricane intensities and trajectories.
For more details, as well as a movie of what happens when one throws
an instrument out of a perfectly good airplane, please see Dr. D'Asaro's
web site at http://poseidon.apl.washington.edu/
A sign of the continuing health of our field is that a significant number of proposals received in 1999 involved new investigators as PIs or co-PIs. These have proven to be competitive with proposals from more experienced investigators and the proportion of funded proposals involving new PIs is similar to the proportion of new PIs amongst submitting Pls. As well as new investigator proposals funded through the core research program, three new PIs in physical oceanography received CAREER awards. The Program would like to congratulate Carl Friedrichs (VIMS), Sarah Gille (UC Irvine) and Arnoldo Valle-Levinson (Old Dominion University) on their success in the CAREER program with proposals that combine exciting research ideas and innovative teaching. Dr. Friedrichs, in interdisciplinary work co-funded with the Marine Geology and Geophysics Program, proposes to study flow and sediment transport in estuaries; Dr. Gille will use a combination of float data and numerical modeling in a study of the role of the Southern Ocean; Dr. Valle-Levinson will study estuary/ocean exchange processes. The educational aspects of the proposals include the involvement of high school students, teachers and undergraduates in both making in situ observations and learning some elements of data analysis, a novel computational analysis laboratory, interdisciplinary teaching, and a program of team research projects in which high school and undergraduate students are mentored by graduate students and faculty members.
CLIVAR News:The past six months have been a very active period for CLIVAR in the United States. Investigators from the University of Colorado (Webster), University of Washington (Houze) and the University of Hawaii (Lukas, Firing and Hacker) with collaborators from NOAA and CSIRO successfully completed a pilot study called JASMINE (Joint Air Sea Monsoon Interaction Experiment) on the Intraseasonal Oscillations of the Asian-Australian Monsoon. The research was funded jointly by the Physical Oceanography and Climate Dynamics Programs at NSF and NOAA's Office of Global Programs. For more information on the experiment and its preliminary results, please visit: http://paos.colorado.edu/~jasmine/. Another Air-Sea Interaction experiment in the cold tongue InterTropical Convergence Zone of the Eastern Equatorial Pacific called EPIC (Eastern Pacific Investigations of Climate) is planned for 2001 and proposals are under review.
Two scientific workshops took place in October and December 1999 to develop the U.S. implementation plans for the Pacific and Atlantic sectors, respectively. We anticipate spinning up these two experiments next year.
Dr. David Legler (legler@usclivar.org) has been selected as the Director of the newly established U.S. CLIVAR Project Office and has started in that position at the end of February 2000. David comes from Florida State University with research expertise on large-scale air-sea interactions. The U.S. CLIVAR office is collocated with the U.S. GCRP offices in Washington, DC. Information about the U.S. CLIVAR program can be found at the following web site: http://www.usclivar.org/index.html. WOCE News:The AIMS phase of WOCE is continuing with synthesis of the Pacific, Deep Basin Experiment, the tracer data sets (He/Tr and CFC's) and the production of Atlases for the Pacific and Southern Oceans. The US WOCE Office is working hard with the WOCE PI's and various data centers to ensure that the release of the WOCE data set on CD-ROMs, scheduled for the Summer/Fall of 2000, is as complete as possible. Drs. Dale Haidvogel and Carl Wunsch will run a WOCE Young Investigator Workshop at NCAR this Summer. The goal of the Workshop is to provide hands-on training to investigators new to WOCE in analysis techniques and modeling tools that could be used to analyze and synthesize the rich WOCE data sets. Staff changes: We are very pleased to announce that Dr. William J. Wiseman, Jr. joined the Physical Oceanography Program as an IPA (rotator) from Louisiana State University at the beginning of the year. Bill brings with him a broad range of expertise in coastal and estuarine processes. Many of you will have met him or become reacquainted with him at the recent Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Antonio. Since graduating from Johns Hopkins University under Don Pritchard and spending two years at the University of New Hampshire, Bill has been at LSU's Coastal Studies Institute for the past 28 years. Much of this time has been spent in interdisciplinary, descriptive coastal and estuarine physical oceanography, involving interactions with both biological oceanographers and marine geologists. During the first decade of his research, Bill was involved in extensive coastal process work in the Arctic (North Slope of Alaska and Svalbard). This included studies of coastal circulation, beach processes with and without ice interactions, bluff retreat, and coastal meteorology. The next ten years were spent in a variety of activities world-wide. These included studies of circulation across reefs and within reefal lagoons on St. Croix, circulation and sediment transport processes at the mouth of the Huang He, turbidity currents in Canadian fjords, and coastal circulation along the Louisiana coast. The past decade has been spent studying coastal and estuarine processes (circulation, sediment transport, hypoxia) along the Louisiana coast with occasional forays to other Gulf of Mexico environments (Mobile Bay, Florida Bay, west Florida shelf). Bill has also recently completed an extensive comparison of observational data from the Louisiana shelf with POM output from the same region. Bill and his LSU colleagues have just begun a slope project involving the deployment of their institute's first deep water (2400 m) mooring. Since this involves a significant portion of their institute's equipment resources, they are all anxious to see how much comes back.
Finally, we wish to congratulate Dick Lambert on receiving the 1999 Ocean Sciences award at the AGU/ASLO Ocean Sciences meeting in San Antonio. It couldn't have gone to a more deserving and nicer person.
Eric Itsweire (eitsweir@nsf.gov) |
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