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The OSCAR project
Alex Megann, Miguel Angel Morales Maqueda, David Smeed
National Oceanography Centre, UK
(Abstract received 03/11/2015 for session X)
ABSTRACT
The Earth releases heat through its crust into the overlaying ocean and atmosphere and, ultimately, into outer space. This heat flux amounts to only about 0.1 W m-2 on average, which is more than 10,000 times smaller than the solar power at the top of the atmosphere, and about 30 times smaller than the current radiative forcing of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Nevertheless, the impact of geothermal fluxes on the abyssal ocean circulation is of first order, chiefly because the injection of heat into the abyss has the effect of destabilising the water column and thereby driving mixing processes and overturning circulations. OSCAR (Oceanographic and Seismic Characterisation of heat dissipation and Alteration by hydrothermal fluids at an axial Ridge) is an international multidisciplinary research project investigating the effect of hydrothermal and geothermal heat input on ocean circulation in the nearly enclosed Panama Basin in the eastern Equatorial Pacific. It includes three research cruises involving hydrographic and geophysical measurements, along with a substantial modelling effort. A layered model such as HYCOM is well suited to this application, since it is expected to show much reduced interior numerical mixing compared with the default z-coordinate model type, particularly in the case where tidal forcing is applied. The planned high-resolution regional implementation of HYCOM will be described in this talk.
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2015 LOM Workshop, Copenhagen, Denmark June 2nd - 4th, 2015