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Jody M. Klymak School of Earth and Ocean Sciences University of Victoria P.O. Box 3055 STN CSC Victoria, BC Canada, V8W 3P6 | Phone: (250)-472-5969 Fax: (250)-721-6200 Office: Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Building A313 jklymak@uvic.ca |
Research Interests
Small and medium scale ocean flows, and their impacts on larger scale flows: waves, turbulence, fronts, eddies etc. These processes are what ultimately dissipate energy from the mean ocean circulation and mediate the mixing of momentum, heat, salt, and passive tracers.
| Curriculum Vitae | Publications | Teaching | Calendar |
Graduate Student Opportunities
The Uvic Ocean Physics Group is actively looking for new graduate students. See our possible projects page for details.
Projects
Lateral Mixing in N. Pacific
In collaboration with DFO scientists I have been going to Line P and measuring the upper 200 m of the ocean to determine how lateral mixing occurs in the thermocline. At the depths shown below, temperature is almost a passive tracer, with the mean field getting colder the further one looks offshore. The small scale variability - eddies and meanders - between these gradients have not been well-explored before.
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| Temperature along Line P from onshore to offshore, note the coherent eddy-like structures between 75 and 125 m. Each depth represnts an isopycnal, recast at its mean depth |
Modelling internal tides and turbulence over large supercritical topography
I have a proposed parameterization for turbulence caused by breaking tidal waves over sharp topography that is relatively easy to implement in numerical models.
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| Comparison of the local Mellor-Yamada scheme and a mixing scheme I developed based on breaking-wave overturn size |
Seismic Oceanography
AESOP
Assessing the Effects of Submesoscale Ocean Parameterizations (AESOP) was an experiment designed to test the ability of numerical models to simulate coastal phenomena. As part of that experiment, we moored R/P FLIP just offshore of Carmel CA, and made intensive measurements of internal waves and currents. This work was carried out with Rob Pinkel and the rest of the Ocean Physics Group at Scripps.
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| *R/P FLIP* moored as part of AESOP |
Solitary waves in the South China Sea
Rob Pinkel and I participated in an experiment in the South China Sea observing solitary waves propagating through deep water in the basin. We tracked a large number of internal solitary-wave packets as they propagated across the basin, and example of which is shown below.
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| Solitary wave in the South China Sea, observed propagating westward at 3 m/s. |
Horizontal spectra of internal waves and turbulence
A great deal of effort has gone into understanding internal waves and turbulence in the ocean using vertical profilers. Horizontal measurements have not been used systematically for the last thirty years. Here we demonstrate that the motions are strongly influenced by turbulence to very long wavelengths, almost 1 km. The low wavenumbers are dominated by internal waves, but do not appear to vary in amplitude much. We explain this by considering the horizontal projection of vertical spectral models onto the horizontal and demonstrate that we are primarily looking at the "saturated" subrange of internal waves.
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| Horizontal spectra of vertical displacement (i.e. isopycnal slope). Spectra are binned by the strength of the turbulence. The red region at low wavenumbers is identified with internal waves, the blue region at high wavenumbers is identified with turbulence. |
Internal waves across the Pacific
I am now working as a post-doc with Rob Pinkel. One of the projects I am working on is analyzing data collected using the R/V Revelle's on-board Doppler sonar that Rob and the rest off the OPG group have been running on the Revelle since 1999. Of particular interest are long-fast transects across the Pacific. The goal is to gather a large enough data set to improve our knowledge of internal wave patterns in the ocean.
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| Vertical shear from the *R/V Revelle*. a) east-west velocity, b) north-south velocity. |
The Hawiian Ocean Mixing Experiment: HOME
I was a post-doc with Jim Moum and the Ocean Mixing Group at Oregon State University. We used a towed microstructure profiler, Marlin, to quantify the turbulence and shear near the Hawaiian Island ridge, a suspected location of strong mixing.
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| Marlin Recovery Hawaii, October 2002 |
COAST
The Ocean Mixing Group had performed three experiments on the Oregon Coast. Sasha Perlin and Jim Moum are performing most of the analysis. During a recent experiment we observed very large solitary waves of elevation advancing up the Oregon shelf. These waves rode along a near-bottom pycnocline and were a very strong source of shelf turbulence. They also resuspended a lot of sediment.
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| Solitary waves of elevation advancing up the Oregon shelf, January 2003 |
We did work with Parker MacCready and Kate Edwards off Three Tree Point in Puget Sound as well
Sill flows in Knight Inlet
My thesis work was with Mike Gregg at the Applied Physics Lab, UW. We examined the waves and turbulence generated at the Knight Inlet sill.
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| Wave in the lee of the Knight Inlet sill. Traces are turbulent intensity; note the large increase west of the sill. |
Other Stuff
Some other things people may be interested in, including LaTeX style files for American Meteorological Society publications.
Photos
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Last Modified: September 23, 2009
Jody Klymak - jklymak@uvic.ca