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I am employed as a Senior Scientist in the Marine Physics and Climate Group at the National Oceanography Centre, working heavily with our Autonomous Underwater Vehicle fleet of Gliders.
I am interested in understanding biophysical interactions, particularly via observational and model data to investigate mixing, nutrient fluxes and oxygen depletion in the coastal ocean. Recently more of my research has been focused on how offshore wind farms may impact the marine environment via subtle changes to mixing and stratification and related inorganic nutrient and oxygen distributions in shelf seas (PELAgIO project, ScotMer 2023 report on Scoping an Observational Program for Monitoring around Offshore Wind Farms). I work with the Met Office on the MOGli project where gliders are being deployed in the Fair Isle Current for use in operational forecasting models (https://www.meteorologicaltechnologyinternational.com/news/oceans/national-oceanography-centre-to-provide-underwater-glider-data-for-met-office.html).
My background is in ocean physics, with expertise in vertical biogeochemical gradients and turbulent fluxes in shelf seas. I have experience working with physical and biogeochemical data from observations, experiments and numerical models.
Some of my research to date has included quantifying the nitrate turbulently supplied to phytoplankton by wind-driven inertial oscillations and background mixing, and translating these into estimates of associated primary production. We found that this physical mechanism may be responsible for supplying shelf sea phytoplankton with up to two thirds of the nitrate they use for production during summer. My recent research has used glider measurements of dissolved oxygen and the dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy (Ocean Microrider data) to calculate the oxygen budget and respiration of oxygen in the North Sea.
Additionally, as part of the FOCUS (Future states Of the global Coastal ocean: Understanding for Solutions) project I am the leading research into what drives oxygen depletion in the global coastal ocean via incorporation of observations and state of the art model data. Understanding what physical and biological mechanisms drive coastal deoxygenation will help us predict areas that may be at risk in future climate scenarios.