I am a senior post-doctoral research associate on Prof. Karen Heywood’s “Climate-relevant Ocean Measurements and Processes on the Antarctic continental Shelf and Slope” (COMPASS) grant. This project is focused on short term, high risk observational campaigns around Antarctica, using gliders to gather measurements which would be very difficult to obtain otherwise. My work will focus on two main areas: firstly, the exchange processes transporting properties across the Antarctic slope front, including using gliders equipped with microstructure sensors to measure turbulent mixing between layers across the shelf break; secondly, investigating the variability of heat fluxes and water masses entering and leaving the cavities under ice shelves.

My current research is on the “Climate-relevant Ocean Measurements and Processes on the Antarctic continental Shelf and Slope” (COMPASS) grant. This project is focused on short term, high risk observational campaigns around Antarctica, using gliders to gather measurements which would be very difficult to obtain otherwise. My work will focus on two main areas: firstly, the exchange processes transporting properties across the Antarctic slope front, including using gliders equipped with microstructure sensors to measure turbulent mixing between layers across the shelf break; secondly, investigating the variability of heat fluxes and water masses entering and leaving the cavities under ice shelves.

My previous reseach involved working on the Seaglider observations for the OSMOSIS project (Ocean Surface Mixing Ocean Submesoscale Interaction Study).  OSMOSIS aims to develop new, physically-based parameterisations of processes that deepen and shoal the ocean surface boundary layer.  The gliders measure temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, dive-averaged currents, chlorophyll fluorescence, CDOM fluorescence and PAR.  I was involved in processing, calibration and interpretation of the data, including assessing the structure and evolution of the ocean surface boundary layer over the seasonal cycle, examining particular case studies of deepening/shoaling events and their impact on the biogeochemistry, and examining the temporal variability, in particular, the first observations in this region of intraseasonal variability below 150 m, which dominates the variability in the heat content of the upper ocean here.

The research for my PhD centred around diapycnal mixing in the Southern Ocean calculated from CTD and LADCP data using finescale parameterization methods, and modification of these methods to produce diffusivity time series from moored ADCP data.  I was involved in an assessment of finescale parameterization and Thorpe length scale methods for XCTD data, as part of the DIMES project (Diapycnal and Isopycnal Mixing Experiment in the Southern Ocean), in conjunction with collegues at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego.  I also used hydrographic survey data collected around the Kerguelen plateau as part of the SOFine project (Southern Ocean Fine Structure) to study transport in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current.