Tomas Chor
University of Maryland, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
Ocean fronts are sharp boundaries between water masses of different density. At these boundaries, energy moves from large swirling currents down to small turbulent eddies.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
Engineering
- Topics
physical oceanography
ocean fronts
submesoscale
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Examine how symmetric instabilities, an overturning motion that grows at ocean fronts, modify the forward cascade of energy toward smaller scales at submesoscale fronts in the presence of mesoscale strain.
- Run turbulence-resolving large-eddy simulations with a new configuration that includes mesoscale strain, giving a more realistic representation of submesoscale fronts than earlier studies.
- Use the simulation results to identify how energy transfer at oceanic fronts should be represented in predictive ocean models that cannot resolve these small scales.
More about the research
There it is lost to mixing. The swirling currents include mesoscale eddies, which are tens to hundreds of kilometers across, and smaller submesoscale features. How this energy transfer works at fronts affects how well ocean and climate models can predict ocean behavior. Those models cannot resolve these small scales directly.
Why it matters
Ocean and climate prediction models cannot directly capture small-scale turbulence at ocean fronts. They must approximate how energy moves through these scales. Showing how frontal strain and symmetric instabilities together control energy transfer could help modelers represent these processes more accurately. Better representation could improve forecasts of ocean mixing and circulation.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Amrapalli Garanaik
Oregon State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science
Develop a new second-moment model of the upper ocean boundary layer that represents both local and nonlocal turbulent transport, tuned to observations and Large-Eddy Simulation results.
Baylor Fox-Kemper
Brown University, RI·Earth & Environmental Science
Quantify how adding entrainment fluxes to a widely used parameterization of submesoscale mixed-layer instability changes Reynolds-averaged simulations of the Southern Ocean that include ocean biogeochemistry.
Maria Capo Truyols
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Map the spatial structure and time evolution of submesoscale currents, small ocean currents lasting hours to days, in the Alboran Sea using realistic nested numerical simulations at increasing resolution.
The school
University of Maryland: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 602 research doctorates a year.
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