spatial interpolation and filtering of surface current data based on open-boundary modal analysis

...is the title of some of my light reading for the night. But before you begin thinking that I actually understand this stuff I'll just stop you right there and tell you that I have no idea what that means. As described by bloggers before me, scientists have a tendency to use fancy language. We'll get back to that...

So I moved from San Diego but only sort of. I'm taking a physical oceanography class in Santa Cruz. It's offered through the research consortium PISCO which is strangely also named after the national liquor of Chile or Peru (depending on who you talk to). Yes, ecologists are smart and crafty but they also like to drink ...some might say... a lot (see Bucket-O-Hank for proof, he just got a job as an ecologist, congrats Bucket!). Anyways, I highly recommend that you marine folk look into these classes offered by PISCO because they typically cover most of the costs for you and they are taught by some quasi-famous people (in our world they are famous).

The class is comprised of lectures on the physics of various things important to oceanography such ocean currents, upwelling events, internal waves, etc. But we are also conducting a class experiment linking physical aspects of the ocean (temperature, density waves, current velocities) to the biological (also known as the interesting stuff) in the intertidal. Check it out, we'll be using these barnacle settlement plates (the grey squares) to catch little baby barnacles (above) as they settle out from being larvae.

All the ecologists are groaning because that's already been done before. However, the neat part is that we'll be using some cool moorings deployed offshore of the barnacles to measure the physical stuff. You would think that this has frequently been done before but early marine ecology often didn't measure this other stuff. Why? Well first because measuring stuff in the marine realm is a pain in the ass in the first place (you gotta get up early to hit the low tides or strap a scuba tank to your back) and also because measuring all those physical things is usually expensive. It's getting cheaper to do that and it's obviously important so now we're doing it.

Did I mention that I found eelgrass up here? Yes, it grows in Santa Cruz too! Yay eelgrass!




So we've also deployed these moorings in the ocean as well. Some might notice that the anchor at the top of the picture is made from battleship chain. Yes! That's awesome! For the mariners in the group, the chafing gear (that protects the line) is made from firehose. Those little black cylinders are thermistors (fancy oceanographer talk for thermometers) that can sample the temperature once every half second or some such ridiculous rate. The red thing at the bottom is a subsurface buoy which keeps the "thermistor chain" vertical (note the use of fancy language, I'm becoming a better scientist already!).

After deploying the mooring we conducted some additional measurements. One pressing question we wanted to answer was "What is the velocity of an object leaving a cylinder with thrust generated by the mixing of hydrocarbons ignited by a peizoelectric ignition? Specifically, what is the velocity if the object is a potato?"

Charles here demonstrates the use of this sophisticated sampling instrument.

We'll be picking up our moorings and other equipment early next week. Then we'll process and analyze the data and give oral presentations to wrap up the course. Unfortunately I've got to get to my homework which is to figure out how normal mode and open-boundary mode current decomposition techniques produce smooth two-dimensional current fields (forecast: it doesn't look good for this ecologist).

I'll go ahead and leave you with a nice bowl of ginger garlic string beans made by my classmate Mya. Derishous.

Here's a lil teaser pic of a post to come, can anybody (who wasn't there) guess where it was taken?