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Air-sea interaction and Monsoonal variability

Posted by Katherine Joyce 
· Monday, February 6th, 2017 

In January, we (Gualtiero and Amala) participated in a meeting to discuss air-sea interactions and intra-seasonal monsoonal variability in the Bay of Bengal.

A workshop was hosted at IIT-Madras along with students and scientists in India.

Clockwork Ocean in the Baltic Sea

Posted by amala 
· Wednesday, July 6th, 2016 

In the summer of 2016, Sebastian Essink participated in the Helmholtz Institute’s observational campaign to study submesoscale eddies in the Baltic Sea that evolve on time scales of less than a day. An airship and airplanes were used to obtain thermal imagery and track chlorophyll at meter-scale resolution. Coastal research vessels operated from the island of Bornholm and used towed instruments to measure the physical and biological structure in situ.

Pictures show the coast viewed from the Zeppelin, Sebastian on the deck and in the lab of the R/V Prandtl, and the speedboat R/V Eddy, which also towed instruments.

Visit the blog: clockworkocean.wordpress.com


Chasing Freshwater in the Bay of Bengal

Posted by Katherine Joyce 
· Monday, August 31st, 2015 

As part of ASIRI, the Air-Sea Interaction Regional Initiative funded by ONR, we are exploring the role of freshwater on air-sea fluxes in order to improve understanding of the South Asian Monsoons.

We are on a research cruise on board the R/V Roger Revelle from August 23 to September 21, 2015. Scientists from several institutions including University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Oregon State University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, National Institue of Ocean Technology Chennai and National Institute of Oceanography Vishakapatnam are participating in this cruise. The Mahadevan Lab of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are reporting on this blog.

Science for Public Video

Posted by Katherine Joyce 
· Sunday, August 30th, 2015 

Oceans and Climate

From WGBH in Boston: Learn about the complex and vital relationship between the oceans and Earth's climate. She and other researchers at Woods Hole describe how they gather climate and monsoon data via remote sensors in the oceans, and she also explains how international teams work on research cruises like the one she'll be joining in the Indian Ocean.

Swirling Currents Deliver Phytoplankton Carbon to Ocean Depths

Posted by Katherine Joyce 
· Thursday, April 9th, 2015 

“Much of this particulate organic carbon, especially the larger, heavier particles, sink. But we wanted to find out what is happening to the smaller, non-sinking phytoplankton cells from the bloom. Understanding the dynamics of the bloom and what happens to the carbon produced by it is important, especially for being able to predict how the oceans will affect atmospheric CO2 and climate,” says Melissa Omand, who did this study as a postdoctoral investigator in Amala Mahadevan’s lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Read the full paper from Science »

Mahadevan selected as Radcliffe Fellow

Posted by Katherine Joyce 
· Thursday, March 26th, 2015 

Amala Mahadevan was amongst 50 fellows selected for a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.  As a result, she is spending a sabbatical year (2014-15) at Harvard University. During her fellowship year, Mahadevan is devoting time to understanding how the physical complexity of upper ocean dynamics at scales of 0.1–10 kilometers affects oceanic ecosystems. Life in the ocean relies on the photosynthetic production of phytoplankton in the sunlit surface layer, and the complex dynamics of this layer, coupled with the availability of light and nutrients, leads to highly heterogeneous growth and distribution of phytoplankton. Organisms rely on the aggregation of food for survival, with a large fraction of the biological activity concentrated in hot spots. Mahadevan would like examine how the variability and episodic nature of physical processes affects the heterogeneity productivity and resilience of oceanic ecosystems. For more information, see http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/amala-mahadevan

Recent workshop: Life in a Turbulent Environment

Posted by Katherine Joyce 
· Tuesday, March 24th, 2015 
Mahadevan, along with Federico Toschi and David Nelson organized a recent workshop at the Radcliffe Institute titled Life in a Turbulent Environment.
This  workshop convened expertise from the physical, biological and ocean sciences to stimulate a multidisciplinary discussion on how the dynamics of the ocean environment shapes life — ranging from individual plankton and microbes, to their collective ecosystems. How can we scale up our understanding from micro-environments to large-scale distributions, and from individual plankton to populations? How do the growth, transformation and transport of these populations therein affect the large-scale oceanic distributions of carbon, oxygen and nutrients? How does physical variability affect biological growth and patchiness, and how are physical and biological processes coupled through multiple space- and time-scales? From turbulence to ocean eddies — how does the dynamic ocean homogenize and differentiate environments to support growth? How do bio-diversity, species-composition, and size relate to the physical environment? And importantly, what changes can we anticipate in the evolution of planktonic and microbial marine ecosystems in the future? These are some of the questions that we will tackle through a series of talks and discussions in the convivial setting of the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University.

Melissa Omand joins GSO URI as Faculty

Posted by Katherine Joyce 
· Monday, March 23rd, 2015 
Melissa Omand, who joined the lab as a postdoctoral investigator in 2011, has joined the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island as Assistant Professor. For more information: http://www.gso.uri.edu/blog/gso-welcomes-prof-melissa-omand/

Science for the Public

Posted by Katherine Joyce 
· Wednesday, March 4th, 2015 

How Plankton Blooms Absorb CO2

From WGBH: Microscopic plankton play a vital role in the ocean’s absorption of atmospheric CO2. And since that absorption represents about one third of the planet’s CO2, scientists are keen to understand this very complex cycle. Dr. Amala Mahadevan explains how ocean eddies shift layers of warm and cold water, so that the phytoplankton are exposed to sunlight, and then begin to photosynthesize much like plants on land. The process leads to enormous “blooms” that can be seen from space.

North Atlantic Plankton Bloom

Posted by Katherine Joyce 
· Wednesday, July 25th, 2012 

crop_satellite_750_235954Ocean eddies help jump-start plankton blooms that spread across hundreds of square miles

In what’s known as the North Atlantic Bloom, an immense number of phytoplankton burst into existence, first “greening,” then “whitening” the sea as one or more species take the place of others.

What turns on this huge bloom, what starts these ocean fireworks?  Is it the Sun’s warmth? Read the news release »

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Lab News

  • Air-sea interaction and Monsoonal variability
  • Clockwork Ocean in the Baltic Sea
  • Chasing Freshwater in the Bay of Bengal
  • Science for Public Video
  • Swirling Currents Deliver Phytoplankton Carbon to Ocean Depths
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