Abstract
Frontal adjustment and restratification in oceanic mixed layers is one of the processes that is considered to be important in the ocean's multi-scale energy transfer, biogeochemical transport, air–sea interaction, acoustic propagation and naval operations. We summarise a CFD-based modelling approach to sample processes at an idealised mixed layer base using passive scalars and particles, given a subset of realistic constraints on these resources in field experiments. The results emphasise the effectiveness of Lagrangian platforms, in particular passive particles, for sampling rapidly evolving submesoscale oceanic fields.
Acknowledgements
We greatly appreciate the support of the Office of Naval Research and National Science Foundation via grants N00014-09-1-0267, DMS-1025323, DMS-1025359 under the Collaborative Mathematics and Geoscience (CMG) initiative. This research was made possible in part by a grant from BP/The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative. We thank all members of the Lateral Mixing DRI team, who have provided guidance through many insightful comments. The computations were carried out on the University of Miami's high-performance computing (HPC) center ( http://ccs.miami.edu/hpc/), on SystemX at Virginia Tech's advanced research computing center ( http://www.arc.vt.edu) and at the City University of New York High Performance Computing Center under NSF Grants CNS-0855217 and CNS-0958379. We thank the four anonymous reviewers whose comments resulted in a significant improvement of the manuscript. We greatly appreciate the leadership of Catherine Mavriplis in organising this timely special issue, and many useful comments and guidance she provided during the preparation of this manuscript.