Presentation details

Talks & Presentations

Stretching structures in the ocean surface: transport and biological impacts

By Hernandez-Garcia, Emilio
Keynote talk presented at the Workshop on Coherent Structures in Dynamical Systems (Lorentz Center, Leiden, The Netherlands). 2011

The Lagrangian description of fluid transport has been largely enriched with the introduction of stretching quantifiers such as the different types of Lyapunov exponents. Lagrangian Coherent Structures can be readily identified from them. Here we will focus on the finite-size Lyapunov exponent case, as applied to horizontal ocean flows estimated from satellite altimetry. The influence on biological organisms of the structures revealed by the Lyapunov analysis will be
illustrated with examples from the bottom and from the top of marine ecosystems (phytoplankton and marine birds, respectively). Full understanding of the results requires discussion of the robustness of the approach, as well as the consideration of the vertical dimension. With this aim, preliminary results for threedimensional flows will be presented.