This three-year award provides support for US-France cooperative research on improving ocean circulation models of small-scale mixing processes and mesoscale eddies. The project involves Marie-Pascale Lelong and her colleagues at NorthWest Research Associates, Inc. and Patrice Klein and researchers at the Physical Oceanography Laboratory of IFREMER (the French National Institute for Research on the Sea). The investigators will collaborate on the development of new parameterizations that take into account the small-scale signal and mesoscale features of regions of intense thermohaline- front formation. This includes regions in the vicinity of turbulent eddies and jets in the ocean. The project takes advantage of recent results by the French investigators, which indicate a high correlation between thermohaline-front formation and high ambient potential vorticity gradients at the mesoscale. The US investigators bring to this collaboration expertise in theory and modeling. This is complemented by French experience in turbulence dynamics. The collaboration will allow US investigators to extend their theoretical results into an area of realistic oceanic conditions.
