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Simulation of a Turbulent Ocean
Caption:
Image from a numerical simulation of an idealized wind-driven ocean basin, calculated on massively parallel computers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Such computations capture the complex spatio-temporal variability seen in the Earth’s oceans, allowing a better understanding of the Earth’s climate system. Pictured is the vorticity at the surface of the ocean, with red indicating clockwise rotation and blue indicating counter-clockwise rotation. Many small coherent eddies are visible. These eddies can rotate in either direction and can endure for a year or more. The sharp boundary between the broad red and blue regions is a fast-moving meandering jet, analogous to the North Atlantic Gulf Stream.
This research was funded by National Science Foundation grant OCE 98-18839.
(Preview Only)
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| Credit: |
Credit Jeffrey B. Weiss, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder |
| Year of Image: |
2001 |
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Categories:
COMPUTERS / Supercomputing
OCEAN SCIENCE / General
Formats Available:
Restrictions:
No additional restrictions--beyond NSF's general restrictions--have been placed on this image. For a list of general restrictions that apply to this and all images in the NSF Image Library, see the section "Conditions".
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