Postgraduate course
15-20 July 2024
Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Pabellón Cero+Infinito, Ciudad Universitaria, C1428EHA, Intendente Güiraldes 2160
Ciudad de Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA
Language: English
Modality: in person only, 24 students maximum
Registration deadline: 1 April 2024
Confirmation of acceptance: 15 April 2024
Click here for pre-registration
Cost: Free (*)
NEW: Grants! A limited number of grants are available. Each grant consists of a lump sum of up to 400 euros that will be provided in cash on the first day of the meeting. Please apply only if you can ensure complementary funds for the trip.
Priority: PhD students and early-career researchers (max 3 years since graduation) in physical and biological oceanography. Knowledge of fluid mechanics and Python programming language is desirable.
Objective: To bring the opportunity to postgraduate students and early career researchers to learn about meso and submesoscale ocean circulation structures and the impact that those structures have on the biogeochemistry of the ocean.
Rationale: The ocean provides tangible (e.g., from fisheries, tourism, transport, oil and gas exploitation) and non-tangible (e.g., the key role of the ocean in controlling climate, ecosystems and biodiversity both in the ocean and on land) benefits to society.
Why focus on meso- and submesoscale features in the ocean?
Time and spatial sampling are limiting factors of the spatiotemporal resolution of the phenomena we can describe in the ocean. In-situ observations and high (e.g., 1 km) spatial resolution satellite images of sea surface temperature and colour clearly show the complexity of the ocean. Being able to increase the spatial and temporal resolution of observations is of critical importance: productivity in the surface layer of the ocean is up to an order of magnitude larger at scales of 100 m to 1 km (submesoscale) than at scales of 40 to 200 km (mesoscale). Thus, current observations of air-sea fluxes of climate-related variables such as CO2 could be seriously biased if a proper biological pump is not considered. Furthermore, ocean circulation at scales shorter than 100 km is responsible for transporting half of the heat and carbon from the upper ocean to the deep ocean, two critical processes we should further explore to understand global climate change. A major change in our knowledge of these processes is expected with the recent dataset delivered by the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission, launched in December 2022. Also, tracking dense arrays of surface drifters helps quantify vertical velocities in the ocean’s upper layer.
The course aims to provide the basics to understand how meso- and submesoscale structures:
– develop and propagate in the ocean,
– can be detected both from satellites and from in-situ measurements, and
– affect biophysical processes in the ocean and all the trophic levels.
Primary sponsors
– Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA, Argentina)
– International Association for the Physical Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO)
– Instituto Franco-Argentino de Estudios sobre el Clima y sus Impactos (IFAECI, CNRS-CONICETUBA-IRD)
– Departamento de Ciencias de la Atmósfera y de los Océanos (DCAO)
Organizing Committee
Dr Martin Saraceno, CONICET-UBA, Argentina (chair)
Dr Laura Ruiz-Etcheverry, CONICET-UBA, Argentina
Dr Juan Pablo Pisoni, CONICET-UNP, Argentina
Dr Maristella Berta, Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche, Italy
Dr Marcelo Barreiro, Universidad de la República, Uruguay
Dr Carolina Parada Veliz, Universidad de Concepción, Chile
Dr Antonio Fetter, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil
(*): Attendance to the course is free. The University of Buenos Aires is currently evaluating the contents of the course and might decide to request a fee from those students who will require an official certificate from the University. More news on this point will be available by the end of March 2024.