Hideaki Kitauchi to host seminars

Submitted by Jennifer Hutchings
Phone: 907-474-7569
08/08/05

Hideaki Kitauchi of the Frontier Research Center for Global Change will present a one-hour, seminar, devoted to two topics, on Thursday, August 18, 2005, at 3:30, in room 401 at IARC.

Labrador Sea Modeling Studied by a Coupled Sea Ice-Ocean Circulation Model

Collaborators: Hiroyasu Hasumi, U. of Tokyo

Intermediate water formation in the Labrador Sea has a direct connection to the global thermohaline circulation, which influences the global climate. The intermediate water Labrador Sea Water (LSW) is formed by means of deep convection. Eddies are considered to play an important role in the deep convection. We are interested in understanding the roles of eddies on the intermediate water formation by the use of an eddy-resolving coupled sea ice-ocean model. In the seminar we will present our current status of a Labrador Sea modeling.

An Analytic Solution of Steady Stokes Flow on a Rotating Spherical Cap

Collaborators: Harper L. Simmons (IARC, UAF) and Motoyoshi Ikeda (Hokkaido U.)

An analytic solution of two-dimensional, steady, linear, viscous flow on a spherical cap--the region of a sphere that lies above (or below) a given plane--rotating about its center is obtained. An inflow and an outflow on the boundary of the spherical cap drive the fluid motion.

The solution of the stream function is expressed as the Fourier series in longitudes and the associated Legendre functions of complex degrees in cosines of colatitudes. The fluid particles move nearly along lines of constant latitudes in the geostrophic balance everywhere, except for near the North Pole where the flow is slow and the viscous force dominates over the Coriolis force. Our results support the approximation analysis and laboratory experiment studied by Imawaki and Takano (Deep-Sea Res. 21, 69--77, 1974).

For more information contact: Jennifer Hutchings, jennifer@iarc.uaf.edu, or phone 907-474-7569