Seminar: Stuart Bishop, NCSU MEAS

UNC at Chapel Hill Department of Marine Sciences’ is proud to host a seminar by Stuart Bishop, PhD. This event is scheduled for Wednesday, September 5th at 3:35pm in room G201 on the ground floor of Murray Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This seminar will also be broadcast live to UNC’s Institute of Marine Sciences room 222.

Presenter Affiliation: North Carolina State University Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences

Title:  New insights into the impacts of mesoscale eddies on air-sea buoyancy fluxes

Abstract: The thermal component of the generation of oceanic eddy potential energy (EPE) is proportional to the covariance of sea surface temperature and net heat flux through the air-sea interface. In this work we find that the air-sea feedbacks generated by mesoscale eddies act as a sink of EPE available to be converted to eddy kinetic energy in a Lorenz energy cycle rather than a source, which had been previously proposed. The traditional definition of an “eddy” as a deviation from the time mean does not accurately reflect their true essence. Regions of the ocean with a large seasonal cycle can deceptively appear as sources of EPE.