Island wakes

3 nov - 28 nov 2008

In order to expand our understanding of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamic aspects of island wakes, members of this project, in collaboration with international colleagues from France , Spain, Germany and the UK, were awarded financial support to participated in an european integrated infrastructure initiative: HYDRALAB III, in order to study a ’continuum of wake regimes’ in a laboratory setting. The experiments will take place during November 2008 in the rotating tank for geophysical studies, located in Grenoble, France.

Participants

Name	Position	Country
R. Caldeira	Researcher	Portugal
A. Stegner	Researcher	France
C. Dong	Researcher	USA
G. King	Researcher	UK
R. Penel	PhD student	France
A. Valente	PhD student	Portugal
A. Lazar		France
P. Sangra		Spain
M. Arencibia		Spain

The ’Coriolis rotating platform’ due to its large size, provide access to a range of Ro and Re numbers, for density stratified flows, with no equivalent world wide. In other words, dynamical regimes with low viscosity and high Coriolis effects can be reached, while the centrifugal force remains negligible. Such regimes are directly relevant for the study of oceanic mesoscale processes (1-100 km horizontal scale). The high Re, high Ro island wake experiments will also include studies around a Madeira Island-like obstacle. Results will serve as benchmarks for numerical experiments as well as reference to interpret observations.

Participant planning : Doodle

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