TFO Postdoctoral Research Fellowship: Analysis of small scale mixed layer and upper ocean sound speed and current variability and the development of transport theory based acoustic propagation models
Abstract
From the standpoint of antisubmarine warfare (ASW), the mixed layer and upper ocean are regions of immense Naval tactical importanc"e. This area is also of great interest to physical oceanographers, meteorologists, climate scientists, and biologists because this is the boundary through which energy, momentum, heat, buoyancy, and gasses are exchanged between the ocean and the atmosphere, and it is a rich ecosystem for a vast array of ocean organisms and marine wildlife. So while a significant oceanographic literature exists on the upper ocean it comes as some surprise that a modern acoustical characterization of this important region appears not to exist. Some of the Navy~s mixed layer transmission loss models apparently are based on results from themid-50~s Acoustic, Meteorological, Oceanographic Survey (AMOS). The purpose of this postdoctoral research appointment is to make some amend for the aforementioned acoustical shortcoming by 1) mining the literature for acoustically significant information, 2) analyzing oceanographic data from the 2005 North Pacific SPICE experiments and some previous experiments to characterize upper ocean sound speed and current field variability and 3)developing deterministic and stochastic mode based acoustic propagation models to evaluate the link between observed ocean variability and acoustic variability. Here acoustical effects are expected to be a strong function of frequency and therefore propagation between 100 Hz and a few kilohertz will be analyzed. This band opens up a wide array of ocean process for considerationsuch as 1) bubbles and Langmuir circulations, 2) surface gravity waves, 3) inertial oscillations, internal waves and tides, 4) mixing and spice, 5) air/sea interaction, heat and buoyancy fluxes and 6) biology/fish. It is the objective of our group that this work lay the foundations for carrying out a TFO field program to determine the extent to which upper ocean acoustical fields can be predicte"d using state of the art ocean and acoustical models.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 20, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912580
Entities
People
- John A. Colosi
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- University of California, Santa Cruz