Leif Thomas
Stanford University, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Deep in the ocean, waves travel along the boundaries between water layers of different density. These internal waves can break and stir the ocean.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
physical oceanography
internal waves
submesoscale currents
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Develop theory for how vertically sheared near-bottom currents change the dispersion relation of internal waves in a sloping bottom boundary layer, for conditions where the Rossby and Richardson numbers are near one.
- Analyze existing ocean observations to find out how near-inertial and tidal (semi-diurnal) internal waves interact with submesoscale currents near the seafloor.
- Run idealized and realistic simulations of wave–current interactions in the Gulf Stream, East Greenland Current and Denmark Strait Overflow to estimate their effect on basin-scale mixing and circulation.
- Contribute new capabilities to the open-source ocean model Oceananigans and its diagnostic package Oceanostics.
More about the research
That stirring, called mixing, helps set how heat, nutrients and dissolved gases move through the ocean, and so it matters for climate and for coastal chemistry. Near the seafloor, especially where the bottom slopes, internal waves meet strong near-bottom currents. How the waves and the currents affect each other there, and what that means for mixing across whole ocean basins, is still poorly understood.
Why it matters
Mixing driven by internal waves affects how the ocean moves heat and carbon, and it affects coastal biogeochemistry. Better descriptions of mixing near the seafloor in currents such as the Gulf Stream could improve climate and ocean circulation models. The project's contributions to the open-source tools Oceananigans and Oceanostics could also help other ocean modelers.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Tomas Chor
University of Maryland, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
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.
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.
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.
The school
Stanford University: 87 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 739 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.