Department of Physics and Physical
Oceanography Colloquium
The SPURS experiments:
Bracketing the global water cycle
Fred Bingham, UNC Wilmington
The global water cycle, an essential part of the global climate system, mainly takes place over the ocean. 85%
of global evaporation and 78% of precipitation occur across the interface between ocean and atmosphere. As it
is extremely difficult to make consistent and accurate measurements of ocean-atmosphere fluxes of freshwater
over the ocean, the scientific community has been increasingly looking to use ocean salinity as a proxy
indicator. Unfortunately the relationship between salinity and freshwater flux is complicated by internal ocean
processes such as advection, vertical and horizontal mixing and subduction. The SPURS field campaigns were
designed to better understand the dynamics of upper ocean salinity in areas of the ocean most impacted by
either evaporation or precipitation. SPURS-1 took place in 2012-2013 in the evaporation-dominated region of
the central subtropical North Atlantic. SPURS-2 is planned for 2016-2017 in a precipitation-dominated part of
the eastern tropical Pacific. In this seminar, I discuss the rationale behind each of the experiments, the observing
systems that were deployed in SPURS-1 and are planned for SPURS-2, and some of the scientific results of
SPURS-1. (Graphic by Sam Levang)
Friday, February 5, 2016
2:00 PM
DeLoach Hall, Room 212
Refreshments will be served at 1:50 PM