DFO SCIENCE SEMINAR
DATE AND TIME: Tuesday February 14, 2012 at 10:00AM. WHERE: Auditorium of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre (NAFC), DFO, 80 East White Hills Rd., St. John's, NL. SECURITY: General public will be required photo ID to access the DFO building. It is recommended to arrive few minutes early to sign-up at the Commissioner's Desk (Main Entrance). ABSTRACT: Considerable effort has been directed towards understanding biophysical interactions in the ocean. Advanced modelling efforts have resulted in limited success in accounting for the biological response to physical and chemical drivers. Insufficient observational information is frequently cited as a limiting factor. A general ocean turbulence model was applied to evaluate its potential towards interpolating observations so as to define representative annual cycles in physical state variables. The model was relaxed to observed temperatures and salinities at Station 27. Meteorological observations were used to derive surface fluxes of heat, water and momentum and drive the model. In contrast, advection profiles were prescribed based on assumptions. The contribution of surface forcing to advection was found to be significant. Vertical diffusivities were computed, compared with observed nitrate distributions and used to drive a biogeochemical module. Simulation of the phytoplankton distribution as measured by fluorescence measurements at Station 27 yielded somewhat gratifying results.
Feb 7th, 2012
