Milan Curcic

Hurricane‐induced ocean waves and stokes drift and their impacts on surface transport and dispersion in the Gulf of Mexico

Hurricane Isaac induced large surface waves and a significant change in upper ocean circulation in the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall at the Louisiana coast on 29 August 2012. Isaac was observed by 194 surface drifters during the Grand Lagrangian Deployment (GLAD). A coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean model was used to forecast hurricane impacts during GLAD. The coupled model and drifter observations provide an unprecedented opportunity to study the impacts of hurricane-induced Stokes drift on ocean surface currents. The Stokes drift induced a cyclonic (anticyclonic) rotational flow on the left (right) side of the hurricane and accounted for up to 20% of the average Lagrangian velocity. In a significant deviation from drifter measurements prior to Isaac, the scale-dependent relative diffusivity is estimated to be 6 times larger during the hurricane, which represents a deviation from Okubos (1971) canonical results for lateral dispersion in nonhurricane conditions at the ocean surface.

Statistical properties of the surface velocity field in the northern Gulf of Mexico sampled by GLAD drifters

The Grand LAgrangian Deployment (GLAD) used multiscale sampling and GPS technology to observe time series of drifter positions with initial drifter separation of O(100 m) to O(10 km), and nominal 5 min sampling, during the summer and fall of 2012 in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Histograms of the velocity field and its statistical parameters are non-Gaussian; most are multimodal. The dominant periods for the surface velocity field are 1–2 days due to inertial oscillations, tides, and the sea breeze; 5–6 days due to wind forcing and submesoscale eddies; 9–10 days and two weeks or longer periods due to wind forcing and mesoscale variability, including the period of eddy rotation. The temporal e-folding scales of a fitted drifter velocity autocorrelation function are bimodal with time scales, 0.25–0.50 days and 0.9–1.4 days, and are the same order as the temporal e-folding scales of observed winds from nearby moored National Data Buoy Center stations. The Lagrangian integral time scales increase from coastal values of 8 h to offshore values of approximately 2 days with peak values of 3–4 days. The velocity variance is large, O(1)m2/s2, the surface velocity statistics are more anisotropic, and increased dispersion is observed at flow bifurcations. Horizontal diffusivity estimates are O(103)m2/s in coastal regions with weaker flow to O(105)m2/s in flow bifurcations, a strong jet, and during the passage of Hurricane Isaac. The Gulf of Mexico surface velocity statistics sampled by the GLAD drifters are a strong function of the feature sampled, topography, and wind forcing

Atmospheric forcing of the upper ocean transport in the Gulf of Mexico: From seasonal to diurnal scales

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) was an environmental disaster, which highlighted the urgent need to predict the transport and dispersion of hydrocarbon. Although the variability of the atmospheric forcing plays a major role in the upper ocean circulation and transport of the pollutants, the air-sea interaction on various time scales is not well understood. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the atmospheric forcing and upper ocean response in the GoM from seasonal to diurnal time scales, using climatologies derived from long-term observations, in situ observations from two field campaigns, and a coupled model. The atmospheric forcing in the GoM is characterized by striking seasonality. In the summer, the time-average large-scale forcing is weak, despite occasional extreme winds associated with hurricanes. In the winter, the atmospheric forcing is much stronger, and dominated by synoptic variability on time scales of 3–7 days associated with winter storms and cold air outbreaks. The diurnal cycle is more pronounced during the summer, when sea breeze circulations affect the coastal regions and nighttime wind maxima occur over the offshore waters. Realtime predictions from a high-resolution atmosphere-wave-ocean coupled model were evaluated for both summer and winter conditions during the Grand LAgrangian Deployment (GLAD) in July–August 2012 and the Surfzone Coastal Oil Pathways Experiment (SCOPE) in November–December 2013. The model generally captured the variability of atmospheric forcing on all scales, but suffered from some systematic errors.

Impact of storm-induced cooling of sea surface temperature on large turbulent eddies and vertical turbulent transport in the atmospheric boundary layer of Hurricane Isaac

Roll vortices in the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) are important to oil operation and oil spill transport. This study investigates the impact of storm-induced sea surface temperature (SST) cooling on the roll vortices generated by the convective and dynamic instability in the ABL of Hurricane Isaac (2012) and the roll induced transport using hindcasting large eddy simulations (LESs) configured from the multiply nested Weather Research & Forecasting model. Two experiments are performed: one forced by the Unified Wave INterface - Coupled Model and the other with the SST replaced by the NCEP FNL analysis that does not include the storm-induced SST cooling. The simulations show that the roll vortices are the prevalent eddy circulations in the ABL of Isaac. The storm-induced SST cooling causes the ABL stability falls in a range that satisfies the empirical criterion of roll generation by dynamic instability, whereas the ABL stability without considering the storm-induced SST cooling meets the criterion of roll generation by convective instability. The ABL roll is skewed and the increase of convective instability enhances the skewness. Large convective instability leads to large vertical transport of heat and moisture; whereas the dominant dynamic instability results in large turbulent kinetic energy but relatively weak heat and moisture transport. This study suggests that failure to consider roll vortices or incorrect initiation of dynamic and convective instability of rolls in simulations may substantially affect the transport of momentum, energy, and pollutants in the ABL and the dispersion/advection of oil spill fume at the ocean surface.

Method for efficient prevention of gravity wave decoupling on rectangular semi-staggered grids

Generation of short gravity wave noise often occurs on semi-staggered rectangular grids as a result of sub-grid decoupling when there is a strong forcing in the mass field. In this study a numerical scheme has been proposed to prevent the generation of the gravity wave decoupling. The proposed numerical method provides efficient communication between decoupled gravity wave finite-difference solutions by a simple averaging of a term in the height tendency in the continuity equation. The proposed method is tested using a shallow water sink model developed for the purpose of this study. It has been demonstrated that this method outperforms other existing approaches. The new scheme is time efficient, based on explicit time integration and can be easily implemented. The proposed method is applicable in hydrodynamic models specified on semi-staggered B or E grids.