Absolute geostrophic currents in the North Pacific Ocean are calculated from the newly gridded Argo profiling float data using the P-vector method for the period of 2004–11. The zonal geostrophic currents based on the Argo profile data are found to be stronger than those based on the traditionalWorld Ocean Atlas 2009 (WOA09) data. A westward mean geostrophic flow underneath the North Equatorial...

We describe new parallelization techniques applied to a highly parallel ocean circulation application code – the Miami Isopycnic Ocean Coordinate Model or MICOM. We compare three parallel architectures executing MICOM: vector, massively parallel, and a multiprocessor workstation. Results from a high resolution 0.08 MICOM North Atlantic basin calculation on the Cray T3D are described briefly. Th...

An ocean general circulation model (OGCM) with wetting and drying (WAD) capabilities removes the vertical-wall coastal assumption and allows simultaneous modeling of open-ocean currents and water run-up (and run-down) across movable land–sea boundaries. This paper implements and tests such a WAD scheme for the Princeton Ocean Model (POM) in its most general three-dimensional setting with strati...

Western boundary currents as they extend eastward into the ocean basin (referred to here as WBCEs) are regions of intense air-sea interaction, where the ocean loses heat and moisture to the atmosphere and absorbs carbon dioxide. Air-sea interactions in WBCEs can affect weather and climate both locally and remotely, on time scales of days to decades. Thus significant societal benefit can be achi...

Today, the only surviving wild population of giant tortoises in the Indian Ocean occurs on the island of Aldabra. However, giant tortoises once inhabited islands throughout the western Indian Ocean. Madagascar, Africa, and India have all been suggested as possible sources of colonization for these islands. To address the origin of Indian Ocean tortoises (Dipsochelys, formerly Geochelone gigante...

The evolutionary pressures that drive long larval planktonic durations in some coastal marine organisms, while allowing direct development in others, have been vigorously debated. We introduce into the argument the asymmetric dispersal of larvae by coastal currents and find that the strength of the currents helps determine which dispersal strategies are evolutionarily stable. In a spatially and...

Simulation models examined the process of gene flow in marine animals with planktonic larvae, and three factors that may influence it: ocean currents, planktonic period and spawning season. To focus on a realistic example, the models were based on measured ocean currents around Point Conception in southern California and the life histories of two intertidal gastropods, Littorina scutulata and L...

Convective rains in the Intertropical Convergence Zone produce lenses of freshened water on the ocean surface. Due to significant density differences between the freshened and saltier seawater, strong pressure gradients develop, resulting in lateral spreading of freshwater lenses in the form of gravity currents. Gravity currents inherently involve three-dimensional dynamics. As a type of organi...

Altimeter sea surface height (SSH) fields are analyzed to define and discuss the seasonal circulation over the wide continental shelf in the SW Atlantic Ocean (27°-43°S) during 2001-2012. Seasonal variability is low south of the Rio de la Plata (RdlP), where winds and currents remain equatorward for most of the year. Winds and currents in the central and northern parts of our domain are also eq...

Oceanographic images obtained from environmental satellites by a wide range of sensors allow characterizing natural phenomena through different physical measurements. For instance Sea Surface Temperature (SST) images, altimetry data and ocean color data can be used for characterizing currents and vortex structures in the ocean. The purpose of this thesis is to derive a relatively complete frame...