Funding is provided to conduct a large coordinated experiment, the Hawaiian Ocean Mixing Experiment (HOME), near the Hawaiian Ridge to determine whether sites with rough topography are responsible for the mixing of the global ocean. The goals are to identify the major energy pathways for ocean mixing and achieve an approximate energy budget for the region. An array of four High Frequency radars will be deployed on the west coast of Oahu and on the east coast of Kauai to study the current fields over the area of the HOME nearfield current meter array and the tidal propagation region south of the submerged Kaena ridge. The current measurements will be separated into a low-frequency mesoscale component, a mean flow, and spectrally separable tidal constituents. With the aid of high resolution bathymetry, an attempt will be made to separate the baroclinic and the barotropic components of the major constituents, and compare them with a decomposition based on their coherence with the astronomical forcing. Near-surface ADCP data from the nearfield moorings will be used to assess the quality of the radar data.
