5th Warnemünde Turbulence Days (WTD) 2011
on
Turbulence and Mixing in Estuaries and Coastal Seas
September 05-08, 2011, at Isle of Vilm, Germany
The WTD workshops are devoted to the observation, interpretation, and
modeling of oceanic turbulence and its interaction with physical and
ecosystem parameters. Workshops in this series are held on a biannual
basis, and are characterised by their active working atmosphere with a
small number of invited speakers, and a comfortable time frame for
presentations and discussion. In 2011, the WTD will be organised on the
tiny island of Vilm, a nature reserve in the Western Baltic Sea.
During
the 2011 workshop, the discussions will be centered around the role of
turbulence and mixing in estuaries and coastal seas. A substantial
branch of the global freshwater cycle leads from rivers via estuaries
and coastal seas to the oceans. The propagation of the freshwater
through the salinity range from 0 to 35 is exclusively driven by
turbulent mixing, fuelled by the interaction of shear and stratification
on various scales. Many processes are involved on this pathway, such as
internal waves, buoyancy-driven flows, salt wedge dynamics, coastal
upwelling, and different boundary mixing processes. These turbulent
processes are complicated by surface heat fluxes leading to thermal
stratification dynamics, including tidal fronts, double diffusive
processes, mixed layer entrainment and many more.
To shed more
light onto this complex physical environment, presentations of field
observations, laboratory and numerical experiments, and theoretical
studies from different disciplines (including oceanography, atmospheric
sciences, physics and applied math) are invited.
After the
positive experience at the 4th WTD in 2009, the first day of the 5th WTD
will be dedicated to introductory seminars given by international
experts, a procedure that will not only be appreciated by the graduate
and PhD students. Days two and three will then be dedicated to
scientific presentations by students and experts.