In the 10 days that I have been in the hamlet of Qikiqtarjuaq, I have seen many changes. The snow is melting and the small stream that runs next to the ‘SIKU hotel’ base camp is flowing quite quickly. The young boys take immense pleasure in putting things into the water upstream near the school and running along the bank, chasing the items as they float through the culvert under the road and out the other side towards the bay. Yesterday, I saw the hood of a snowmobile pass by. I think that it is probably now wedged under the ice on the beach.
This motion, which we refer to as the kinetic energy of the ocean, comes from solar radiative energy and the tidal forces exerted by the sun and the moon. Terawatts of kinetic energy are injected to the ocean (1 terawatt = 1012 watts). The low viscosity of seawater and the scale of oceanic basins render the motion highly turbulent, meaning that the flow is populated with swirls of all sizes that stretch and fold the fluid on itself. Large swirl end up breaking up into smaller ones until viscous forces dissipates the kinetic into heat or potential energy. This happens when swirls are a few millimeters wide. It is easily possible to see how this happens only by looking at two fluids of different densities, say an ice cube melting at the surface of a glass filled with warm salty water that we gently mix (Fig. 1c).
Partir à l’extérieur, le plus loin possible, au-delà des murs pour s’enrichir de l’intérieur. Voilà qui donne un sens à l’existence. Et cette démarche, j’en suis convaincu, tout le monde peut l’adopter à son échelle. Peut-être cette phrase glanée dans un bouquin de Mike Horn a-t-elle été importante. Je ne sais plus très bien. En tous cas, je l’ai eu souvent dans la tête. Continue reading Mémoires d’un Maitre Coq→
To understand the dynamics of the phytoplankton spring bloom and determine its role in the Arctic Ocean of tomorrow, including for human populations.
