Jules Jaffe
Marine Physical Laboratory
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
The understanding of oceanic processes has always been hindered by the difficulty in measuring them. Almost all types of propagating waves are either rapidly attenuated or suffer little and non-specific interaction with the ocean’s interior. The latest generation of ships, moorings, gliders all offer advantages, however, still suffer from significant aliasing. Via the revolution in micro processing technology, power storage and the continuing advancement of low cost sensors the opportunity to launch swarms of small, autonomous, self contained, and communicating vehicles now exists. Such vehicle swarms could sample oceanic processes on space-time scales that were heretofore unobtainable while being transported at lower Reynolds numbers. This permits the measurement of ocean currents while at the same time providing a view from the point of view of small animals that cannot swim faster than these currents. Among the many interesting processes that can be investigated using these ideas are coastal larval transport, the measurement of various features of sub mesoscale eddies, and the evolution of thin oceanic layers of phytoplankton. This talk will describe the speaker’s experiences in developing autonomous platforms for ocean sensing, his vision of the evolution of these systems, and the role that they can play in helping to achieve a better understanding of the dynamics of the ocean’s interior and the processes that occur within.
http://jaffeweb.ucsd.edu/index.html