Monitoring Of Oceanic inteRnal tIdes usiNG fibre optic telecommunication cables

Ocean mixing plays a crucial role in the Earths climate as it balances the meridional overturning circulation that buffers global warming.

Quantifying mixing is challenging because energy enters the ocean at basin-scale but it dissipates at cm-scale over the vast ocean.

One common element in the cascade of energy towards small scales is the transfer of energy to internal waves, which ultimately drive ocean mixing. Energy transfers to the internal wave field are largely enhanced through flow interactions with topography.

Observations of wave-topographic interactions are, however, scarce and its mechanistic understanding comes mainly from idealized process ocean studies, which lack a direct benchmark against nature.

To fill the observational gap in ocean mixing, the MOORING project will explore wave-topographic interactions at unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution by combining novel submarine cable data with numerical advanced modelling.

New data will be gathered using fibre-optic cables by means of a revolutionary technology, which has opened a new door for exploring bottom wave dynamics. The potential of these novel observations to identify ocean-mixing hotspots in the ocean remains, however, unknown.

To shed light on this, I will gather conventional oceanographic measurements and integrate them in realistic high-resolution numerical simulations, leveraging my modelling skills.

The MOORING project will bridge seismology and oceanography, integrating a variety of approaches, and it will allow me to be trained in observational methods at the hosting institution, while expanding my numerical skills in a secondment institution, fostering a network of national and international collaborators.

The proposed approach could eventually be implemented at global scale with the aim to better close energy budgets and improve mixing parametrizations in climate change models for more accurate predictions.