Lagrangian Dispersion and Deformation in Submesoscale Flows

A thesis investigates submesoscale ocean currents using Lagrangian trajectories from observed and modeled drifters. The work analyzes drifter pair statistics to characterize turbulent dispersion at horizontal scales of 1-20 kilometers. It was authored by Sebastian Essink at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Use Cases

• Characterizing turbulent dispersion at submesoscales based on observed drifter pair statistics.
• Investigating the role of vertical shear in dispersion using modeled drifter trajectories.
• Estimating velocity gradient tensors using cluster-based methods with three or more drifters.
• Deciphering submesoscale motions from inertia-gravity waves based on observed velocity gradients.

Strengths

• Focuses on submesoscale flows, an important element of upper ocean dynamics.
• Uses both observed and modeled drifter trajectories for analysis.
• Applies cluster-based methods to estimate the velocity gradient tensor.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Collection Method

Analysis of Lagrangian trajectories from observed and modeled drifters.