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Impact of windage on ocean surface Lagrangian coherent structures

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Abstract

Windage, the additional direct, wind-induced drift of material floating at the free surface of the ocean, plays a crucial role in the surface transport of biological and contaminant material. Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) uncover the hidden organizing structures that underlie material transport by fluid flows. Despite numerous studies in which LCS ideas have been applied to ocean surface transport scenarios, such as oil spills, debris fields and biological material, there has been no consideration of the influence of windage on LCS. Here we investigate and demonstrate the impact of windage on ocean surface LCS via a case study of the ocean surrounding the UNESCO World Heritage Ningaloo coral reef coast in Western Australia. We demonstrate that the inclusion of windage is necessary when applying LCS to the study of surface transport of any floating material in the ocean.

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Acknowledgements

Simulation data and LCS codes are available upon request to MRA. TP and MRA acknowledge funding support from ONR grant N000141210665. Additional support was provided by the MIT MISTI Global Fund and a UWA Gledden Fellowship. GI, NJ and RL acknowledge support from an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project Grant (DP120103036) and RJ from an ARC Future Fellowship Grant (FT110100201).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ENDLab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Michael R. Allshouse & Thomas Peacock

  2. School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering & Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia

    Gregory N. Ivey, Nicole L. Jones & Jiangtao Xu

  3. School of Earth and Environment & Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia

    Ryan J. Lowe

  4. Materials and Chemistry/Environmental Modeling, SINTEF, Trondheim, Norway

    C. J. Beegle-Krause

Authors
  1. Michael R. Allshouse
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  2. Gregory N. Ivey
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  3. Ryan J. Lowe
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  4. Nicole L. Jones
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  5. C. J. Beegle-Krause
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  6. Jiangtao Xu
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  7. Thomas Peacock
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Correspondence to Michael R. Allshouse.

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Allshouse, M.R., Ivey, G.N., Lowe, R.J. et al. Impact of windage on ocean surface Lagrangian coherent structures. Environ Fluid Mech 17, 473–483 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10652-016-9499-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10652-016-9499-3

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