Frontal Meanders and Salinity Intrusions from Along-Shelf glider observations at the Pioneer-New England Shelf Array

The Northwest Atlantic Ocean, and the continental shelf in particular, has been undergoing substantial warming over the past fifteen years. This project will analyze long-term oceanographic data from the Ocean Observatories Initiative from the US east coast to study this warming trend. Enhanced data processing and application of machine learning algorithms will be used to produce time series of dominant frontal and exchange processes. The results will benefit the wider oceanographic community including fisheries managers and the commercial fishing industry. Testing prior theoretical work derived from computational sensitivity and laboratory studies will significantly advance understanding of recent changes in water mass properties and stratification are affecting exchange processes. This project will use a portion of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, the Frontal Zone gliders, by applying machine-learning techniques to identify key frontal and exchange processes including frontal meanders, mid-depth Salinity Maximum Intrusions, and Warm Core Ring and shelf break front interactions. The glider data will be quality controlled. This will allow for computing onshore fluxes from the two along shelf transects. Theories for finite amplitude meander characteristics will be applied to extend computational parameterizations to in situ measurements. Glider transects will be used to examine mid-depth salinity maximum intrusions and offshore export of shelf water in shelf streamers around Warm Core Rings. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.