Warnemünde Turbulence Days 2009

(14.09. - 17.09.2009)

“Internal Waves and Turbulence in Coastal Seas”

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 characterized by their active working atmosphere with a small number of invited speakers, and a comfortable time frame for presentations and discussion. In 2009, the WTD was organised on the small island of Vilm, a nature reserve close in the Western Baltic Sea.

During the 2009 workshop, the discussion was centered around the contribution of internal waves to diapycnal mixing with a focus on coastal seas, fjords, and lakes. This included investigations of the generation, propagation, spectral transformation and dissipation of internal waves. Presentations of field observations, laboratory and numerical experiments, and theoretical studies were given by a broad range of speakers from different disciplines (including oceanography, atmospheric sciences, physics and applied math).

The 4th Warnemünde Turbulence Days (WTD) were also strongly linked to the International Leibniz Graduate School on Waves and Turbulence in Atmosphere and Ocean (ILWAO), a German national project organised between the Leibniz Institutes of Atmospheric Physics (IAP, Kühlungsborn) and Baltic Sea Research (IOW, Warnemünde), the University of Rostock and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP, Greifswald). Therefore, the first day of the 4th WTD was dedicated to introductory seminars given by international experts, a procedure that was not only appreciated by the graduate and PhD students. Days two and three were then dedicated to scientific presentations by students and experts.