Project news
June 8, 2021 : Project members show the ocean jets effects on surface physical/biological tracers
An international group of scientists from Chile, France and the US, led by project PI Dr. Ali Belmadani and including project co-PI Dr. Pierre-Amaël Auger, MSc student Katherine Gomez, and US collaborator Dr. Nikolai Maximenko, reveals that so-called ocean quasi-zonal jets or striations (multiple alternated bands of eastward/westward-flowing currents) have an impact on sea surface ocean properties off California and Chile. While banded warm/cold anomalies are found in both regions, similar anomalies in salinity (salty/fresh) and chlorophyll (high/low biological production) are only found off California, probably because of the ocean jets located closer to the coast compared to Chile. The authors show how striations carry those anomalies between the cool, highly productive California upwelling system and the warm, oligotrophic North Pacific subtropical gyre, which are then likely to influence climate and marine ecosystems. These findings, based on the analysis of multi-sensor satellite data, have been submitted for publication in a special issue of Fluids on The Study of Oceanic Jets and Turbulence and are available online as a preprint.
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May 5, 2020 : Co-investigator virtually attends Europe’s largest meeting in geosciences
Project co-I Dr. Pierre-Amaël Auger attended the 2020 European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly, Europe’s largest conference in geosciences usually held every year in Vienna, Austria. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year was however unusual with the physical assembly cancelled and replaced by a virtual online meeting. At the Open session on ocean processes and techniques, Auger presented his highlighted work entitled « Evaluating the signature of oceanic striations on the distribution of biogeochemical properties in the Eastern Pacific Ocean off Chile ». This has been a great online experience, which should inspire new forms of sharing science that are urgently needed to limit the carbon footprint of research activities in the context of global warming.
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June 20, 2019 : Co-investigator attends conference on ocean sustainability in France
Project co-I Dr. Pierre-Amaël Auger attended the Future Oceans2 IMBeR Open Science Conference, the second such Integrated Marine Biosphere Research project conference gathering researchers from all disciplines that contribute towards ocean sustainability for the benefit of society, held in Brest, France. At the session on Multiple drivers and their role in Ocean Global Change Biology, Auger presented his work on the multiple drivers of the spatial distribution of primary productivity in the Humboldt Current system, including the impact of oceanic striations on biogeochemical fields off Chile.
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May 29, 2019 : Graduate students participate to marine science conference in Chile
MSc students Katherine Gomez and Valerie Villegas attended the XXXIX Congreso de Ciencias del Mar, the annual conference of the marine science research community in Chile, held at the University Arturo Prat in Iquique for its 39th edition. At the poster session on physical oceanography, Gomez presented preliminary results on the effect of mesoscale eddy streets on the transport and mixing of temperature and salinity off California and Chile. On the other hand, Villegas presented her findings on the effect of those eddy streets on the distribution of biogeochemical properties off Chile at the oral session on physical oceanography.
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November 8, 2018 : Group members present their research to home institution and funding agency
Project PI Dr. Ali Belmadani, co-I Dr. Pierre-Amaël Auger, scientific programmer David Donoso, and MSc students V. Villegas, T. Berger and K. Gomez organized a mini-symposium named after the project, Impact of Preferred Eddy Tracks on Tracers in Eastern Boundary Upwelling Systems of the Pacific Ocean, held at the School of Marine Sciences, Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso (PUCV), Chile. The PI and co-PI made a general presentation of the project (Belmadani et al.) before sharing their latest results in relation with mesoscale eddy impacts on transport and mixing of marine debris (Belmadani et al.) as well as ocean striation effects on biogeochemistry (Auger et al.) off Chile. The event attracted a crowd of PUCV faculty and students, as well as Dr. Rhett Jefferies, science director in Santiago, Chile at the Office of Naval Research – Global, which funds this project.
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June 27, 2018 : Principal investigator attends conference on turbulence in Martinique
Project PI Dr. Ali Belmadani participated to the 5th International Conference on Turbulence and Interactions, a workshop organized by the European community working on fundamental and applied turbulence and fluid mechanics, held this year in Trois Ilets, Martinique (French West Indies). At the special session on environmental turbulence featuring presentations on topics such as hurricanes or the ocean conveyor belt, Belmadani presented new results on mesoscale eddy impacts on transport and mixing of floating marine debris in the eastern South Pacific.
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December 13, 2017 : Project investigators attend world’s largest meeting in geosciences
Project PI Dr. Ali Belmadani and co-I Dr. Pierre-Amaël Auger attended the 2017 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world’s largest conference in geophysics, held this year in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. The two project leaders presented updates on their results on mesoscale eddy impacts on surface transport and horizontal mixing (Belmadani et al.) as well as ocean striation effects on biogeochemical tracers (Auger et al.) in the eastern South Pacific.
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November 7, 2017 : Project members participate to metocean conference in Chile
Project PI Dr. Ali Belmadani, co-I Dr. Pierre-Amaël Auger, and scientific programmer David Donoso participated to 5to Congreso de Oceanografia Fisica, Meteorologia y Clima del Pacifico Sur-Oriental, the biannual conference of the oceanography/meteorology/climate research community in Chile, held at the University of Concepcion for its 5th edition. The three researchers presented their latest results in relation with various aspects of the project : mesoscale eddy impacts on surface horizontal mixing (Belmadani et al.) and oceanic striation imprints on biogeochemical properties (Auger et al.) off Chile, comparison of striations and eddies off Chile and California (Donoso et al.).
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March 11, 2017 : Project team finds that oceanic jets coincide with streets of ocean vortices
An international team of researchers from Chile, France and the US, led by the project PI Dr. Ali Belmadani, reveals that so-called oceanic jets or striations (multiple alternated bands of eastward/westward-flowing currents) coincide with streets of mesoscale ocean vortices (i.e. preferred eddy tracks) off central Chile. They propose that rough ocean bottom topography in a remote area of the eastern South Pacific is able to desviate large-scale ocean currents and generate instabilities that propagate westward as eddy streets. The latter leave a mark in the long-term ocean circulation, namely striations. On the other hand, unstable striations interact with the eddies, generating new eddies along the way and therefore maintaining the whole system in a positive feedback loop. These results, based on numerical modelling and analysis of satellite data, have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans.
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October 13, 2016 : Project page on ResearchGate
A project log was created on the ResearchGate platform in October 2016, with the project abstract, collaborators, references and results. See:
