Understanding and Predicting Marine Connectivity
A foundational paradigm in marine ecology is that distinct ecoregions are characterized by unique assemblages of species. Understanding this ecoregionalization is key to a sustainable ocean and to conservation and management planning. Unfortunately, in most of the world Ocean, data sparseness away of coastal areas and the large-scale dispersal by ocean currents complicates the definition of these ecoregions. Our group seeks to better understand the major factors controlling ocean connectivity across a range of spatial and time scales, and how they may evolve in future climates. Through numerical circulation models and data science tools, often coupled to genetic analysis and habitability models, we explore marine connectivity from km to entire basins.
https://cos.gatech.edu/news/finding-and-connecting-ocean-ecoregions-find-and-conserve-marine-species
Our most recent publications in this theme:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-87711-z
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.790927/full
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.790929/full
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0924796319300168
Climate variability, climate change and dynamical system theory
Large-scale patterns of climate variability, or climate modes, will likely change in a warming planet. How they will change, however, remains an open question, despite its increasing urgency. Climate models often provide conflicting answers because they cannot reproduce accurately all the dynamical processes at play and their multiscale interactions. Our group works to adapt existing or develop new, innovative methodologies that build upon dynamical system theory, machine learning and complex network analysis to address this pressing societal need, and improve climate prediction at interannual to decadal scales.
Our most recent publications in this theme:
https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.675840
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-020-00403-x
https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL096731
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2019MS001654
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018EF000979
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-017-0006-4
Multiscale ocean interactions: From submesoscales to climate
Oceanic mesoscale eddies – typical sizes of 30–200 km – contain more than half of the kinetic energy of the ocean, contributing to the transport of heat, nutrients, plankton, dissolved oxygen and carbon. At smaller scale submesoscale turbulence – typical size of structures varying from 100 m to few km -modulate vertical transport and horizontal mixing. Submesoscale circulations fill the ocean surface, and recent numerical simulations and indirect observations suggest that they may extend to the ocean interior. It remains unclear, however, how far-reaching their impact may be—in both space and time, from weather to climate scales. Our group has shown that submesoscale circulations contribute to the re-supply of potential energy in the ocean interior by allowing for enhanced small-scale, vertical mixing with important consequences for carbon and heat sequestration. We have shown that they are key players in regions where anthropogenic changes are already modifying the ocean circulation, from the Labrador Sea, where the melting of glaciers in Greenland is modifying stratification and primary productivity over the shelf, to the South China Sea, where the planned construction of over 30 new hydropower dams will forever change the inflow of riverine water, to the Gulf of Mexico, where projected changes in precipitation over the continental US and increasing sea surface temperatures are likely to modify the stratification of the basin, which hosts key coral and fish communities.
Our most recent publications in this theme:
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.615066
https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2020.542147
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74345-w
https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-19-0241.1
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep44011
http://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.292
The ocean circulation and its biogeochemistry
We work in collaboration with Prof. Ito’ group to uncover underlying mechanisms linking the global ocean circulation and the biogeochemical cycling of carbon and oxygen, and how this cycling may change in the future.
Our most recent publications in this theme:
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-17-231-2020
https://doi.org/10/1002/2017GB005716
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2016GB005617
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015GL064320