דוקטורנטים מספרים - Ron Goldman
Exploring the Dynamics of Ocean Currents in the Southeastern Mediterranean
Ron Goldman
Supervisors: Prof. Eyal Heifetz and Dr. Ayah Lazar
My name is Ron Goldman, and I am a Ph.D. student in the Geophysics department at Tel Aviv University. My doctoral studies are under the supervision of Prof Eyal Heifetz, together with Dr. Ayah Lazar from Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research.
The Eastern Mediterranean has an intricate and beautiful circulation pattern. Within the basin, the circulation is quite turbulent. This can be seen by the way eddies move and evolve as a result of their own dynamics, or due to outside forces of the changing weather conditions. Closer to the coast the situation is a bit more stable; the currents there usually flow counterclockwise along the coast. Disturbances in the alongshore current may appear in various ways: as meanders, local reversals of the current direction, penetration of eddy from the open sea, and formation of eddies within the current. These disturbances are interesting from a hydrodynamic and oceanographic standpoint, touching on issues of current stability, air-sea interaction and the formation of water-masses.
Furthermore, since the alongshore current somewhat isolates the coastal and open sea regions, disturbances there have direct environmental and ecological implications. For example, the spread of coastal pollution to the open sea, the exchange of nutrient-rich coastal water with nutrient-poor open sea water, and the path of jellyfish swarms are several phenomena that may be influenced. In my research I aim to study the physical mechanisms in the east Mediterranean circulation that relate to the alongshore current and eddy. I work with the results of numerical circulation models in order to characterize them and examine these phenomena in idealized simulations.
Chlorophyll concentration from satellite image and numerical model results. The image exhibits eddy intrusion into the alongshore current close to the Israeli coast. Filaments on the Egyptian shelf travel on the alongshore current.
