A recent project is leading my adviser and I to design and build a large, acrylic tank which will be able to hold several hundred litres of seawater. Since a tank like this will take both time and money to build, it is logical to develop multiple experiments to run in it. These experiments will…
Daily Dose: Let there be light
It is often extraordinary what a simple coat of paint, a touch of color, or a simple alteration can make in the appearance of things to see everyday. Even something as simple as cleaning an oil smudge off of the garage door can make the space feel much cleaner and “put-together”, so today will be…
Interpolating Bathymetry to Unstructured Mesh
A few weeks (perhaps months) ago I introduced the side project that I am involved with (here) whereby our aim is to develop a hydrographic model for Apalachicola Bay, Fl. Today I wanted to provide an update for that project while also sharing some interesting problems that we’ve had to work around. To see the…
Marine Geochemistry: a particle flux model
While on a run yesterday in my new Xero brand running sandals[1], I found myself thinking about the proposal I have to write for marine geochemistry. Since I have read a fairly comprehensive assortment of water column particle flux papers, I figure it might be a good fit for this proposal. Vertical carbon flux, which…
Finalizing my research, the CCELIM model, in R
For the past 6 months I’ve been working on an inverse modeling project as a ‘starter’ graduate project, and today I am announcing that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. While there is certainly more work ahead, especially with regards to the manuscript, the model and the code are just…
Code Walkthrough: Inverse Modeling
In previous articles (here and earlier here) I covered in some cursory way my current research into the California Current and about the technique of Inverse Modeling, so today I wanted to delve into the actual tools and code that I’ve developed. To review, an inverse model is An inverse model seeks to solve a series…
Quantifying Error
Being able to appropriately address uncertainty and error is fundamental to the pursuit of science. Without it, results and theory would never match up since theory usually involves a level of abstraction that permits simplification of the problem and observational results are never perfect and include all sorts of uncertainty. Recently I’ve been trying to…
Spurious diapycnal mixing in z coordinate models
Introduction Diapycnal mixing is a natural process whereby water parcels of different temperature and/or salinity get mixed. This process, as opposed to advection, is non-adiabatic (non-reversible) and is governed by diffusive mechanisms. The rate of diapycnal mixing is elevated in coastal waters relative to the open ocean and is responsible for the introduction of nutrients…
End of the Semester
Believe it or not, but it is already the end of the semester for me and my peers. Somehow nearly four months have disappeared once again into that historical accident that we call the past. Since each of my three classes have required a project to be done for the final, I figure that I may…
Climate Change
When I moved to Florida from Boston, I knew there were be a few cultural differences that I would have to work around. That goes without saying, and one of these differences surrounds the whole issue of climate change and anthropogenic carbon emissions. While I like to think that most people are pretty open minded…
Measuring a dye patch from a drone
While my interests are, admittedly, quite broad, I’ve always been fascinated with signal processing and remote sensing. Just imagine the technological marvel that we can accurately measure the amount of chlorophyll, a grove of marijuana or the amount of snow from a satellite whose travelling 1,000s of miles per hour around our planet. If that’s…
First Day of Graduate Life
Since I dread reading simple blow-by-blows, all I will say about my first day as a PhD student is that I’ve missed being a student and that I am exhausted! The end. Well I suppose that I should say a bit more than that.