COMCEPTS

Combined Ocean Mixing Course, Experiments, and Practices for Turbulence Sampling

September 1 - 19, 2025


Thinking about ocean turbulence too much and want to understand it more? With the support of UC Ship Funds, a group of senior grad students are running a summer school on measuring ocean mixing - both directly through microstructure profilers and indirectly through measurements of ocean currents and density. 

This will be a 3-week workshop from September 1 - 19, 2025 where students will learn the basics of ocean turbulence, conduct a research project examining outflow from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, and analyze measurements made on day trips aboard the R/V Sproul. 

topics covered in this course

  • Introduction to turbulent flow in the ocean
    •What is turbulence?
    •What does turbulence look like in the ocean?
    We’ll discuss: length scales, turbulence cascade, instabilities and the effects of stratification

  • Quantifying turbulence with
    •Dissipation rates of momentum (epsilon) and temperature variance (chi)
    •Reynolds stress

  • Measuring and computing turbulence with
    •CTDs
    •ADCP/ ADVs
    •Microstructure profilers (shear probes and fast thermistors). Check out the instruments we’ll be using here!
    Inferring quantities such as diffusivity and heat fluxes from measurements

    + Doing your own analysis using ship data from the R/V Sproul!

FieldworK

The course includes both lectures as well as fieldwork. The first and last week of the course will be held at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and be classroom based with lectures and group work. The middle week consists of 5 individual fieldwork days where students will gain experience sampling ocean turbulence using various methods doing day cruises aboard the R/V Sproul (no overnight sampling). The fieldwork will take place in the vicinity of San Diego harbor/Pt Loma. No special gear is required for the fieldwork and lunch and snacks will be provided aboard the ship.

Group Projects

As part of the course, participants will be divided into groups looking into specific research questions for which they will collect data during the fieldwork aboard the R/V Sproul. Projects will include:

  • Internal waves and the continental shelf: internal wave evolution over the shelf and wave-driven turbulence and mixing

  • Air-sea interactions: diurnal turbulent heat flux and mechanisms of mixing in the surface boundary layer

  • Turbulent mixing of a wastewater plume: turbulent mixing of the outfall plume in the near-field and plume evolution over a tidal cycle


Logistics

This is a “course only” offering. Students living outside of San Diego will have to find their own transportation and accommodation. Expect most days to start around 9am and finish around 5pm (fieldwork days will have an earlier start time). Lunch and snacks will be provided during the fieldwork days.


Please fill out this interest form if you want to be notified when the course registration opens.

Got questions? Email Andrea at anr009@ucsd.edu or Ankitha at akannad@ucsd.edu

We look forward to learning more about turbulence with you!
Andrea Rodriguez-Marin Freudmann, Ankitha Kannad, Caique Dias Luko, Helen Zhang, Charlotte Bellerjeau and Kerstin Bergentz