TLC
turbulence in the La jolla canyon project
Dye concentration in a tidally driven, 3D stratified boundary layer near a sloping boundary. Dye was seeded initially within a very narrow density range and subsequently diffuses as the flow sloshes up and down the slope. From “Tidally driven mixing and dissipation in the stratified boundary above steep submarine topography” (Winters 2015).
Schematic and straw plan showing the canyon, the dye release in the bottom boundary layer and the coherent suite of observational tools.
LJCT is similar to the Boundary Layer Turbulence (BLT) project, but it will be carried out on a smaller scale with higher sampling.
Simulations by Winters (2015) show just how complicated turbulent flows near the boundaries can be. In such flows, the sampling requirements are daunting, and the typical assumptions of lateral homogeneity and negligible lateral transport that are made in order to estimate turbulent quantities come into question Taylor et al. (2019). Though BLT will surely lead to advances, the need to work from large ships in 1700 m of water necessarily limits the tools that can be used and the frequency of sampling with them.
It is time to stop “poking holes” in such complex turbulent flows with shipboard profilers alone. This project seeks to simultaneously employ several new and old sensing modalities in concert in order to image turbulent structures, their evolution, and their fluxes in a fundamentally new way. Because we aim to site the experiment in La Jolla Canyon, right in front of Scripps, the instrumentation can be fielded coherently, without travel, and using small boats and UUVs.