Stratified and stirred : monsoon freshwater in the Bay of Bengal

Submesoscale ocean dynamics and instabilities, with characteristic scales 0.1-10 kin, can play a critical role in setting the ocean's surface boundary layer thickness and associated density stratification. Submesoscale instabilities contribute to lateral stirring and tracer dispersal. These dynamics are investigated in the Bay of Bengal, motivated by the upper ocean's potentially coupled interactions with Monsoon winds and convection. The region's excess precipitation and runoff generates strong salinity gradients that typically set density fronts and stratification in the upper 50 m. Since we cannot synoptically measure currents containing fast-evolving and oscillating components across the submesoscale range, we instead analyze passive tracer distributions (spice = density-compensated temperature (T) and salinity (S) anomalies), identifying signatures of flows and testing dynamical theories.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Spiro Jaeger, Gualtiero Victor Rudi.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Amala Mahadevan.

• Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering.
• Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122332

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122332