The Physics of Oceans and Atmospheres (POA) research discipline contains two core subdisciplines: Physical oceanography and atmospheric sciences.
Teaching and Research Faculty
Andrea Allan, Jack Barth, Jesse Cusack, Simon de Szoeke, Edward Dever, Melanie Fewings, Jonathan Fram, Amrapalli Garanaik, Jessica Garwood, Jennifer Hutchings, Andrea Jenney, Mike Kosro, Jim Lerczak, Ricardo Matano, Phil Mote, Jonathan Nash, Larry O'Neill, Tuba Özkan-Haller, Brodie Pearson, David Rupp, Roger Samelson, Andreas Schmittner, Kipp Shearman, Karen Shell, Emily Shroyer, Nick Siler, Eric Skyllingstad, Yvette Spitz, Justin Wettstein, Greg Wilson, Ed Zaron, Seth Zippel
POA Email Lists
Go to CEOAS Email Lists and search for "poa" using Ctrl-F (Windows, Linux, Chrome OS), ⌘-F (Mac), or tap (upload) then Find on Page (phone or tablet).
Physics of Oceans and Atmospheres Seminar Series
Tuesdays from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in Burt 193 and on Zoom
(Unless otherwise noted. Additional or updated information will be added as it becomes available.)
Fall Term 2025
POA seminars will be held on Tuesdays at 3:30 PM in Burt 193. If you would like to present, are hosting a visitor, know someone who might be interested, or have speaker suggestions, please contact Inés Leyba and Jasen Jacobsen, who are organizing this term's POA seminars. Also welcome are suggestions for non-OSU visiting speakers. POA discipline seminar funds are available to provide partial travel support for external visitors if needed.
Zoom connection information for these seminars throughout the fall term.
- October 7 – Olavo Marques
Title: Observations of Sea-swell Wave Transformation on Rough Rocky Shores
Abstract:
Rocky shores are poorly studied nearshore environments. Rocky seabeds can have large roughness, where the bottom depth changes by a few meters over short horizontal scales, which may lead to different nearshore processes than on sandy beaches. In this talk, I will discuss results based on in-situ measurements from the first ROXSI field experiment along the Monterey Peninsula, California. During the month-long summer experiment, offshore wave buoys show incoming sea-swell waves with moderate significant wave heights (Hs ~ 1 m), and short periods (T < 10 s). Around 10 m bottom depth, collocated wave buoys and pressure sensors show that pressure-based significant wave heights are systematically overestimated. These errors arise from the rough seabed over O(1) m horizontal scale, can be reduced by considering the average bathymetry around pressure sensors, and indicate that surface waves do not adjust to sharp changes in bathymetry across such short spatial scales. As waves propagate across scales of 20-100 m, observations show significant wave energy flux convergence in bottom depths greater than 3 m, where depth-limited wave breaking is negligible. The onshore reduction in energy flux is consistent with parameterized wave dissipation due to bottom friction and large wave friction factors between 1 and 10, which are among the largest friction factors in the literature. Wave observations and bathymetry data yield an empirical power-law parameterization for the friction factor, which can be implemented in numerical models of wave transformation over seabeds with large-scale roughness such as coral reefs and rocky shores.
- October 14 – Lars Ackermann
Title: Climate - cryosphere interactions for past and future climates with the Earth system model AWI-ESM
AbstractUnderstanding interactions between the cryosphere and other Earth system components is critical for projecting future long-term climate and for reconstructing past climate variability. Yet, the implementation of cryosphere elements in complex Earth system models is a relatively recent development. In the Alfred Wegener Institute Earth System Model (AWI-ESM), we have implemented fully interactive ice sheets and icebergs. This allows for fully interactive simulations of atmosphere–ocean–ice sheet feedbacks across a wide range of timescales. By using an unstructured ocean grid, we are able to use a fairly high horizontal resolution of up to 20 km in dynamic regions while keeping computation time feasible.
I will present transient simulations with interactive Northern Hemisphere ice sheets for past and future climates. These simulations cover the build-up of huge ice masses over North America during the last glacial inception, the demise of the Greenland ice sheet in different multi-millennial future warming projections, and the implications on the climate system. Furthermore, I will show an example of the interactive iceberg model and their effect on deep ocean hydrography, closing a gap between climate and ice-sheet modeling.
- October 21 – Charlotte Bellerjeau
Title: Observations of Kinetic Energy Cascade to Dissipation
Abstract
Kinetic energy that originates in the tides and larger scale ocean dynamics transfers across scales until it is eventually dissipated by turbulence or converted to potential energy by upwelling. The rate and pathway of this kinetic energy cascade is governed by internal wave interactions with other waves, submesoscale and larger dynamics, and topography. Much of our knowledge of the internal wave kinetic energy cascade has been built upon the theory of weakly nonlinear wave-wave interactions, which is the backbone of mixing parameterizations often used in models. However, the greatest mixing and dissipation often occur in strongly nonlinear cases where energy is transferred rapidly across scales. In this talk I will present observations of a kinetic energy cascade forced by a vigorously breaking semidiurnal tide within a submarine canyon. Two methods of computing cross-frequency kinetic energy flux are compared to observed dissipation, one allowing for strong nonlinearity and the other assuming weakly nonlinear wave-wave interactions. The comparison suggests a shorter pathway to dissipation in the presence of strongly nonlinear dynamics than is accounted for by parameterizations, highlighting the importance of observations of highly energetic mixing. I will also present observations of critical layer dynamics that lead to near-inertial wave breaking in the Gulf Stream, transferring energy directly from the lowest frequency internal waves to dissipation.