Environmental and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics

Environmental and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics is primarily concerned with fluid flow in rivers, lakes, oceans and the atmosphere. Such flows dominate our physical existence. Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (GFD) is traditionally the study of naturally occurring large scale fluid motions in the oceans and in the atmosphere which are affected by the Earth's rotation. Examples of large scale motions are the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic Ocean and atmospheric blocking events, one of which was responsible for the great heat wave in Europe in 2003. Over the past 30 years attention has been increasingly focused on the impact of large scale

Smaller scale motions, such as turbulence and mixing caused by internal waves, and surface water waves have a direct impact on bio-geochemical processes in oceans and lakes and hence on human activity. Due to their ubiquitous nature, these motions are also of fundamental importance to the large scale circulation in both the oceans and atmosphere.

Members of the group

Faculty:

Kevin Lamb (nonlinear waves, internal waves, hydrodynamic instabilities and mixing, physical oceanography and limnology, coupling of hydrodynamic and bio-geochemical processes in lakes).
Francis Poulin (hydrodynamic instabilities, Rossby waves, vortices, physical and biological oceanography).
Marek Stastna (internal waves, solitary waves, instability of stratified fluids, simple models in climate research, ocean circulation).
Michael Waite (turbulence in rotating stratified fluids, vortices, internal waves, mesoscale atmospheric dynamics, moist convection)

Faculty with related interests:

H. De Sterck (computational fluid dynamics, astrophysical fluid dynamics, magneto hydrodynamics, planetary atmospheres).
Serge D'Alessio (computational and geophysical fluid mechanics).

Graduate Students:

MMath	PhD
Jared Penney	Anton Baglaenko
Shyamila Perera	Michael Dunphy
	Sina Khani
	Wentao Liu
	Kristopher Rowe
	Nancy Soontiens
	Derek Steinmoeller
	John Yawney

Post-docs and RAs:

Georges Djoumna (post-doc)
Christopher Subich (post-doc)

We have a collection of information, images and movies about continuum and fluid mechanics for students ranging in experience from first to fourth year.

Environmental and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Group