Oceans cover more than 70 % of Earth’s surface and play a significant role in Earth’s weather and climate. They store solar radiation and distribute heat, modulate gas fluxes, and drive weather patterns with their currents. Surface waves, turbulence, and shear currents (WTS) in the upper layer of the ocean are critical to these functions, yet WTS are not modelled accurately in climate simulations, leading to large errors.

The EU-funded WaTurSheD project will address this important gap through a comprehensive and methodical experimental campaign to control and systematically vary each WTS parameter. It will enable the first-ever model of WTS-driven mixing in the upper ocean using direct empirical evidence.

Publications

• Pim Adriaan Bullee; Stefan Weichert; Astri Nore; Leon Li; Simen Andreas Ådnøy Ellingsen and Robert Jason Hearst. (2024) The influence of water turbulence on surface deformations and the gas transfer rate across an air-water interface
• Stefan Weichert; Benjamin Keeler Smeltzer and Simen Andreas Ådnøy Ellingsen. (2024) The Effect of Horizontal Shear on Extracting Water Currents from Surface Wave Data
• Zibo Zheng; Yan Li and Simen Andreas Ådnøy Ellingsen. (2024) Dispersive Wave Focusing on a Shear Current: Part 2 - Nonlinear Effects
• Ellingsen, S.Å., Zheng, Z., Abid, M. et al. (2024) Dispersive Wave Focusing on a Shear Current: Part 1 — Linear Approximations. 
• Babiker OM, Bjerkebæk I, Xuan A, Shen L, Ellingsen S.Å. (2023) Vortex imprints on a free surface as proxy for surface divergence.
• Benjamin Keeler Smeltzer; Olav Rømcke; R. Jason Hearst; Simen Andreas Ådnøy Ellingsen. (2023) Experimental study of the mutual interactions between waves and tailored turbulence. Journal of Fluid Mechanics
• Luc Lenain; Benjamin Keeler Smeltzer; Nick Pizzo; Freilich Maria; Luke Colosi; Simen Andreas Ådnøy Ellingsen; Grare, Laurent; Peyriere, Hugo; Statom, Nick. (2023) Airborne Remote Sensing of Upper-Ocean and Surface Properties, Currents and Their Gradients From Meso to Submesoscales. Geophysical Research Letters
• Zibo Zheng; Yan Li; Simen Andreas Ådnøy Ellingsen. (2023) Statistics of weakly nonlinear waves on currents with strong vertical shear. Physical Review Fluids
• Ellingsen, S.Å., Zheng, Z., Abid, Pizzo N, Lenain L, Rømcke O, Ellingsen SÅ, Smeltzer BK. (2023) The role of Lagrangian drift in the geometry, kinematics and dynamics of surface waves. Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

Project timeline and Funding

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe 1.1 European Research Council under Grant Agreement No 101045299.

WaTurSheD will run from 2023 until the end of 2027.