Month: July 2018

Shane Keating

Featured by Shane, posted in Contributors, Featured Contributors

If you looked down on the ocean from space, you would see an intricate tapestry of mesoscale eddies , 30-300 km across, interwoven with submesoscale vortices and fronts on scales of 1-30 km, and surface waves and turbulence on scales smaller than 1 km. My research uses cutting-edge developments in the fields of applied mathematics, satellite remote sensing, and physical oceanography to understand the profound influence of these features on ocean circulation, climate, and marine ecology.

Using ultra-high-resolution observations from land, sea, and space, we are now beginning to unravel the ocean’s tapestry of eddies, fronts and waves and understand, model, and predict their role in mixing and dispersion in the ocean.

 

Links:

Personal website
UNSW School of Mathematics and Statistics
ARC Centre of Excellence in Climate Extremes
Articles on The Conversation

Follow my on Twitter @science_shane

 

 

 

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PhD Project: Observation Impact Assessment of Future High-resolution Observations

by Shane, posted in Get involved, PhD projects

Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs) are a recent innovation in ocean modelling, adapted from meteorology, that use synthetic ocean observations to inform future observational strategies, e.g an artificial temperature record from a ‘toy’ glider, or sea-surface height observations from a future satellite. By assimilating these synthetic observations into a numerical model, we will investigate how well the data-stream improves the model estimates, thus guiding future observing strategies.

In this project, we will perform OSSEs to provide valuable support for the next generation of high-res ocean observing systems, both in Australia (through IMOS) and Internationally. An international example is NASA’s Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission (http://swot.jpl.nasa.gov), a ground-breaking future satellite to be launched in 2021. SWOT will use pioneering wide-swath radar interferometry to measure ocean features as small as 2km — more than ten times the resolution of current technologies. By comparing simulated SWOT observations with the model “truth”, we will establish a valuable baseline for calibration and validation of real SWOT data once it is launched in 2021. This project will be co-supervised by Dr Shane Keating (UNSW), Moninya Roughan (UNSW), Dr Colette Kerry (UNSW) and Dr Patrice Klein (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory).

This projects is part of an ARC-funded research grant to develop an end-to-end ocean weather information system. Applicants require a research B.Sc. (Hons) or research Masters degree preferably in physics, mathematics, oceanography or quantitative Marine Science. Candidates are expected to apply for a Domestic Research Scholarship (Australian residents) or International Research Scholarship (non-residents). Successful applicants will be eligible for an additional top-up scholarship of $5000+ per annum for cost-of-living expenses. See here for online applications and key dates.

Applications close 12 October for commencement in 2019.

PhD Project: Observation Impact Assessment using Data Assimilation

by Shane, posted in Get involved, PhD projects

Quantifying the impact of new high-resolution ocean observations – such as autonomous gliders, coastal radar, or satellite imagery – is critical for the efficient deployment of observing infrastructure. In this project, we will quantify how particular observing platforms contribute to ocean state estimates, allowing us to determine the most effective locations and parameters to observe, e.g targeting extremely expensive ship-based sampling vs agile autonomous glider measurements to areas where they will add most value.

Data Assimilation (DA) is a powerful tool used to combine observations with a numerical model to produce a “best estimate” of the ocean state. We will perform a series of DA experiments to test the sensitivity of the estimated ocean state to various observation platforms. The results of this project will assist in guiding the types and location of observations that will best improve the model forecasts at the least cost. This project will be co-supervised by Dr Colette Kerry (UNSW), Prof Brian Powell (U. Hawaii), Prof Moninya Roughan (UNSW), and Dr Shane Keating (UNSW).

This projects is part of an ARC-funded research grant to develop an end-to-end ocean weather information system. Applicants require a research B.Sc. (Hons) or research Masters degree preferably in physics, mathematics, oceanography or quantitative Marine Science. Candidates are expected to apply for a Domestic Research Scholarship (Australian residents) or International Research Scholarship (non-residents). Successful applicants will be eligible for an additional top-up scholarship of $5000+ per annum for cost-of-living expenses. See here for online applications and key dates.

Applications close 12 October for commencement in 2019.

Sea-ice, heatwaves, and marine plastics: Upcoming M4PE seminar speakers announced

by Shane, posted in Climate, Latest news, M4PE Seminar, Oceans

We are pleased to announce the upcoming speakers at the Mathematics for Planet Earth (M4PE) seminar.

August 27: Bishakhdatta Gayen (Australian National University)

Bishak Gayen is a Research Fellow at the Research School of Earth Sciences at Australian National University.  His current research interests are nonlinear internal waves in the ocean, turbulent convection, modeling of Antarctic ice melting and Southern ocean dynamics. Bishak was awarded an ARC DECRA fellowship in 2013, and received the RJL Hawke post-doctoral fellowship from the Australian Antarctic Science Program to study subsurface melting of ice shelves around Antarctic with implications for future global sea level rise.

November 5th (Note: new date): Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick (UNSW Sydney)

Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick is an ARC Future Fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW Sydney. Her most recent research has pioneered how heatwaves are measured, what drives them, how they will change in a warming climate, and the human contribution behind these changes. Sarah received a 2013 Young Tall Poppy Award for excellence in science communication in 2013; was shortlisted for a Eureka prize in 2014; was named once of UNSW’s 20 Rising Stars who will Change the world in 2016, and also won the 2016 Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society early career researcher award.

October 17: Erik van Sebille (Utrecht University)

Erik van Sebille is an Associate Professor in oceanography and climate change in the Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Erik’s research focuses on how currents and eddies in the ocean transport heat and nutrients, as well as marine organisms and plastics between different regions of the ocean. He uses both data from ocean observations as well as from computer simulations of the ocean to understand how different regions of the ocean are connected. Erik was awarded an ARC DECRA fellowship in 2013, and received the 2016 Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the European Geosciences Union Ocean Division.