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OCR for page 144
Oceanography in 2025: Proceedings of a Workshop
Small Scale Ocean Dynamics in 2025
Jonathan Nash*
Major advances in oceanography result from methodical sampling fortunate enough to capture details of new processes at work. While web-accessible observatories will provide one source of ocean data, small scale physical dynamics will continue to be elucidated using novel instrumentation and well-planned, intensive studies. These are key if internal waves and the resultant turbulence are to be generalized and identified within sparse datasets or parameterized in imperfect models. However, the changing infrastructure and technological advances in electronics, energy, and computational power by 2025 will change the way these studies are conducted. Together these will permit real time integration of process-driven experimentation, ancillary observatory data and numerical modeling. By 2025, we will have new instruments, more powerful computers, and more efficient access to ancillary data. But the discoveries will still be made by inquisitive scientists interpreting real data that streams to us either while at sea or from afar. To move these discoveries to the next level, we will continue to need advanced, efficient vehicles (ships?) with long-range acoustics, rapid profiling capability, etc.
From a technological standpoint, oceanographic instrumentation will benefit from the same advances in high-capacity, low-power electronics that now enable a year’s worth of turbulence data to be acquired with a small battery pack, miniaturized electronics and penny-sized storage
*
College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University
OCR for page 145
Oceanography in 2025: Proceedings of a Workshop
devices. By 2025 we will see routine use of high data-rate sensors in both autonomous roving platforms and moored applications. Instrument suites previously restricted to lab or tethered applications may see routine long-endurance, remote usage as cabled observing systems become a reality.
But new energy systems may provide the biggest change. By 2025, lithium batteries may have gone the way of the phonograph; new energy technologies and/or efficient propulsion systems may power propelled autonomous vehicles for many months instead of many hours. Imagine if energy capacity were to no longer limit mission length, data transmission rates, internal computations, etc. The possibilities for remote, in situ sampling would be almost endless. High-speed autonomous vehicles with high-power acoustics and other sensors could sample in ways almost unimaginable today. Could these eliminate the need for manned ships for physical sampling? More realistically these advances will be incremental. But crises inspire change; even increased efficiency will change our capabilities.
A proliferation of enhanced, long-endurance autonomous platforms could provide a globally distributed set of turbulence and internal wave measurements. Through a combination of routine and targeted experiments, these would capture the dynamics of events that occur both frequently and infrequently, under extreme conditions (hurricanes, high seastate) and in remote locations (high latitude winters). To date, these dynamics have been grossly undersampled due to our general desire to stage experiments in easily accessible regions and when seas are calm. By 2025, I believe we will have made substantial progress towards both quantifying these processes and incorporating their effects into our modeling framework.
