Projects

This page contains a short description of the projects I am currently or have been involved in:

Energy Exoscale Earth System Model (E3SM)

… comming soon!

Interdisciplinary Research for Arctic Coastal Environments (InteRFACE)

… comming soon!

Subgrid-Scale Biophysical Interactions

The ocean is estimated to store over 20% of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide and over 90% of anthropogenic heat, and is the largest reservoir of carbon in the Earth system active on short timescales. A key determinant of this is the evolution and properties of ocean biogeochemical tracers such as carbon dioxide, phytoplankton, nutrients, and sinking particulate organic matter because they greatly influence rate of carbon flux into the ocean from the atmosphere and carbon export from the surface to deep ocean. However, these biogeochemical tracers live, grow, die, are produced, consumed, or recycled within a ‘soup’ of multi-scale turbulent boundary layer flows. Moreover, their interactions with these flows and each other are all subgrid-scale to Earth system models and thus require a parameterization framework that faithfully captures such complexity.

I perform high-fidelity direct numerical and large eddy simulations of various biophysical interactions in an effort to understand what physics are most important in systems such as these. The long term goals of this work include understanding how current parameterizations capture (or fail to capture) these interactions and then subsequently developing either modifications to apply to current parameterizations or a formulation of new parameterizations. Specific studies I have completed or are currently working on in this effort are:

• Effects of submesoscale processes and wave-driven, Langmuir turbulence on passive tracers, both non-reactive and biogeochemically reactive (i.e. phytoplankton, zooplankton, nutrients, etc.)
• Development, optimization, and validation of a reduced-order biogeochemical model for use in high-fidelity large eddy simulations
• Effects of wave-driven, Langmuir turbulence on upper ocean carbonate chemistry
• Effects of submesoscale processes on sinking tracers, such as particulate organic matter, and carbon export from the surface ocean

Stratified Turbulence

Continuously forced, stratified exchange flows occur in many geophysical systems, such as through channels between ocean basins, between coastal shelves and the deep ocean, and at the mouth of rivers and estuaries. These persistent exchange flows are subject to various instabilities that promote the growth of turbulence and mixing between two differing flows. While these processes are assumed to be important to processes such as abyssal mixing, the set-up or destruction of hypoxic layers, and the injection of nutrients and buoyancy into the surface mixed layer, they are unresolved in Earth system models. Like the biophysical interactions above, this necessitates a parameterization framework that faithfully captures the effects of these exchange flows.

As a part of the Mathematical Underpinnings of Stratified Turbulence (MUST) project, I used direct numerical simulations of forced stratified exchange flows to begin to understand properties of the turbulent steady states of two different regimes, shear broadening and shear thinning, and tease out what parameters matter most for predicting the existence of these two regimes. The MUST project also includes several other computational, experimental, and theoretical projects aimed at understanding various other aspects of stratified turbulence.