Buoyancy is one of the main forces driving flows on our planet, especially in the ocean and atmosphere. Buoyancy driven flows encompass a wide spectrum of geophysical flows that range from buoyant coastal currents to dense overflows in the ocean, and from avalanches to volcanic pyroclastic flows on the Earth's surface. In the ocean, buoyant coastal currents transport fresh water, heat, nutrients, sediments, biogeochemicals, pollutants, and biological organisms along many continental shelves and, hence, have important impacts on ecosystems, fisheries, and the coastal circulation.
The XVIII Alpine Summer School entitled 'Buoyancy-Driven Flows' will be held in Aosta, Italy, from June 20 to July 1, 2010. The Co-directors of the school will be: Claudia Cenedese (WHOI); Eric Chassignet (FSU); and Jacques Verron (INPG). The summer school will last 10 days with approximately 10 invited speakers, each presenting 2 or 3 pedagogical lectures. In addition to formal lectures, shorter 'research seminars' will be given by a few additional senior participants. Attendees will also have the opportunity to present their work via poster sessions and to participate in a debate on the importance of buoyancy-driven flows in climate. While it is planned to have a series of lectures with a strong emphasis on the ocean, it is also intended to discuss a wider range of geophysical problems (avalanches, volcanic flows, atmospheric flows, etc.). The intention is to collect the lecture notes and publish them in a book.
Intellectual Merit: The lectures will first give a broad overview of the current state-of-the-art research in buoyancy-driven flows and will be put in the context of a wider range of geophysical problems (avalanches, volcanic flows, atmospheric flows, etc.). Then, more specific lectures will focus on the importance of correctly representing processes than are not currently resolved in the ocean component of climate models. Given the impact of buoyancy flows on the ocean circulation and the Earth's climate, it is considered timely to bring together leading scientists to summarize the present theoretical, experimental, and modeling understanding of buoyancy-driven flows.
Broader Impact: One specific objective of the school is to expose young graduate students and recent Ph.D. recipients to the importance of buoyancy-driven flows in the ocean circulation and in the present day climate, from a combined theoretical, experimental, and modeling point of view. Furthermore, the lecture notes will be published as a text book.
This grat supported the "Buoyancy Driven Flows" Alpine Summer School XVIII in Valsavarenche, Val d'Aosta, Italy, 21-30 June 2010. Generally, we believe that this school was a great success from the point of view of the quality of the lectures, the high level of the students, the interactions between the lecturers and the students, the course location and hospitality of the inhabitants of Valsavarenche, and last but not least the remarkable local organizing committee: Jost Von Hardenberg and Roberta Sciascia. We would like to thank the Valsarenche municipality, National Park of Gran Paradiso, CNRS, IFREMER, ISAC/CNRS and the NSF for their support. Buoyancy is one of the main forces driving flows on our planet, especially in the ocean and atmosphere. Buoyancy driven flows encompass a wide spectrum of geophysical flows that range from buoyant coastal currents to dense overflows in the ocean, and from avalanches to volcanic pyroclastic flows on the Earth’s surface. Although the focus of this school was mainly oceanographic, we also had some lectures putting buoyancy driven flows in the context of a wider range of geophysical problems (avalanches, volcanic flows, atmospheric flows, etc.) This Summer School was intended to have students and post-doc meet with top international experts on buoyancy driven flows and interact in the same location for 10 days to allow an intense period of training by multiple exchanges and discussions with the final production of a book containing the lectures presented during the school. This has proven to be an excellent set up to have students and faculties to interact. Participants have given us a number of comments on the school. They can be summarized as follow: - Excellent lecturers; - The broad approach to the topic of buoyancy driven flows covering different subjects (the ocean, atmosphere, avalanches, and volcanoes) and the different methodologies (for example sometimes very theoretical and sometimes very applied) did not appear coherent at first. But the general opinion was that this coherency came out by the end of the school. - The conditions were not always optimal to allow an easy interaction with the lecturers. Interactions were easy in the conference room but the distance between the different accommodations were not regarded as facilitators in this regard. Nevertheless, individual exchanges with lecturers occurred and were considered very interesting. - The availability of the lectures’ notes and the procedure of an internal review by the students of the lectures appearing in the book were seen very positive. Generally, the fact that this educational venue, the summer school, will lead to a collective work was seen very positively. - Great opportunity to interact with students from other countries and other disciplines. - The quality of the accommodations in the Valley and the beauty of the site were highly appreciated. The long dining times have been criticized by some participants. The publication of a reference book on ‘Buoyancy Driven Flows’ was also one of the products of this school. Each invited lecture arrived at school with a chapter already written describing the lectures material. During the school, the students were invited to participate in the review process of the chapters, in a manner similar to the review process for conventional research journal articles. This is a format that we have already successfully tested in two previous summer schools (Ocean Modeling and Parameterization, Les Houches, 1998; Ocean Weather Forecasting: An Integrated View of Oceanography, Lalonde on Wed, 2004) and led to the publication of two books (Chassignet and Verron, 1998, 2006). All lecturers were required to write a chapter of the book and to participate at the school as long as possible to enable continuous exchanges and interactions with students. A contract was signed with Cambridge University Press for the publication of the book which came out in February 2012: Buoyancy-Driven Flows, 2012. Chassignet, E.P., C. Cenedese, and J. Verron, (Eds.), Cambridge University Press, 436 pp. 250 copies of the book were purchased and distributed between all the school participants and a selected group of students, postdocs, professors and researchers linked to the topic of ‘Buoyancy-Driven’ Flows’.
