Southern Ocean’s climate effects studied

Florida State University has received a $2.6 million grant through the U.S. National Science Foundation to study the Southern Ocean’s climate effects.

The project involving the ocean that surrounds Antarctica will include graduate and undergraduate students at FSU and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, located at the University of California-San Diego.

“DIMES (Diapycnal and Isopycnal Mixing in the Southern Ocean) is an exciting project to measure the nature of deep upwelling in the Southern Ocean and infer its role in Earth’s changing climate,” said Professor Kevin Speer, the project’s principal investigator.

Speer said the project also involves scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Washington, and the United Kingdom.

Florida State University will focus on acoustically tracked instruments called floats that drift nearly a mile deep, returning periodically to the surface to radio environmental information, said Speer.

The other FSU focus will be on obtaining ocean turbulence measurements.

Source: Science Daily