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General characteristics of relative dispersion in the ocean

The multi-scale and nonlinear nature of the ocean dynamics dramatically affects the spreading of matter, like pollutants, marine litter, etc., of physical and chemical seawater properties, and the biological connectivity inside and among different basins. Based on the Finite-Scale Lyapunov Exponent...

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Autores principales: Corrado, Raffaele, Lacorata, Guglielmo, Palatella, Luigi, Santoleri, Rosalia, Zambianchi, Enrico
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5387742/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28397797
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep46291
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author Corrado, Raffaele
Lacorata, Guglielmo
Palatella, Luigi
Santoleri, Rosalia
Zambianchi, Enrico
author_facet Corrado, Raffaele
Lacorata, Guglielmo
Palatella, Luigi
Santoleri, Rosalia
Zambianchi, Enrico
author_sort Corrado, Raffaele
collection PubMed
description The multi-scale and nonlinear nature of the ocean dynamics dramatically affects the spreading of matter, like pollutants, marine litter, etc., of physical and chemical seawater properties, and the biological connectivity inside and among different basins. Based on the Finite-Scale Lyapunov Exponent analysis of the largest available near-surface Lagrangian data set from the Global Drifter Program, our results show that, despite the large variety of flow features, relative dispersion can ultimately be described by a few parameters common to all ocean sub-basins, at least in terms of order of magnitude. This provides valuable information to undertake Lagrangian dispersion studies by means of models and/or of observational data. Moreover, our results show that the relative dispersion rates measured at submesoscale are significantly higher than for large-scale dynamics. Auxiliary analysis of high resolution GPS-tracked drifter hourly data as well as of the drogued/undrogued status of the buoys is provided in support of our conclusions. A possible application of our study, concerning reverse drifter motion and error growth analysis, is proposed relatively to the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 aircraft.
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spelling pubmed-53877422017-04-14 General characteristics of relative dispersion in the ocean Corrado, Raffaele Lacorata, Guglielmo Palatella, Luigi Santoleri, Rosalia Zambianchi, Enrico Sci Rep Article The multi-scale and nonlinear nature of the ocean dynamics dramatically affects the spreading of matter, like pollutants, marine litter, etc., of physical and chemical seawater properties, and the biological connectivity inside and among different basins. Based on the Finite-Scale Lyapunov Exponent analysis of the largest available near-surface Lagrangian data set from the Global Drifter Program, our results show that, despite the large variety of flow features, relative dispersion can ultimately be described by a few parameters common to all ocean sub-basins, at least in terms of order of magnitude. This provides valuable information to undertake Lagrangian dispersion studies by means of models and/or of observational data. Moreover, our results show that the relative dispersion rates measured at submesoscale are significantly higher than for large-scale dynamics. Auxiliary analysis of high resolution GPS-tracked drifter hourly data as well as of the drogued/undrogued status of the buoys is provided in support of our conclusions. A possible application of our study, concerning reverse drifter motion and error growth analysis, is proposed relatively to the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 aircraft. Nature Publishing Group 2017-04-11 /pmc/articles/PMC5387742/ /pubmed/28397797 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep46291 Text en Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Corrado, Raffaele
Lacorata, Guglielmo
Palatella, Luigi
Santoleri, Rosalia
Zambianchi, Enrico
General characteristics of relative dispersion in the ocean
title General characteristics of relative dispersion in the ocean
title_full General characteristics of relative dispersion in the ocean
title_fullStr General characteristics of relative dispersion in the ocean
title_full_unstemmed General characteristics of relative dispersion in the ocean
title_short General characteristics of relative dispersion in the ocean
title_sort general characteristics of relative dispersion in the ocean
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5387742/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28397797
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep46291
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