Mathieu MorvanService hydrographique et océanographique de la marine | SHOM · HOM
Mathieu Morvan
PhD in physical oceanography
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20
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Introduction
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Publications
Publications (20)
The Eastern Kamchatka Current (EKC) is the western boundary current of the North Pacific subpolar gyre. Southeast of the Kamchatka Peninsula lies a large anticyclonic eddy, the Kamchatka Eddy (KE). This eddy is quasi-stationary. More generally, the oceanic region east of the EKC contains many eddies, several of them large and long lasting. Using su...
In the Indian Ocean, salty water masses from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea are important sources of salt, heat, and nutrients. Across the Arabian Sea these outflows impact human and biological activities, their thermohaline characteristics and shapes exhibiting important spatial and seasonal variability. Knowledge of the water masses properties is i...
The Ras al Hadd oceanic dipole is a recurrent association of a cyclone (to the northeast) and of an anticyclone (to the southwest), which forms in summer and breaks up at the end of autumn. It lies near the Ras al Hadd cape, southeast of the Arabian peninsula. Its size is on the order of 100 km. Along the axis of this dipole flows an intense jet, t...
Les eaux Persique et de la Mer Rouge sont des eaux chaudes et salées produites dans les deux bassins d’évaporation que sont le Golfe Persique et la Mer Rouge. Ces masses d’eaux s’écoulent en sub-surface dans le Golfe d’Oman et dans le Golfe d’Aden. Nous nous intéressons dans ces travaux au cycle de vie et à l’impact de la dynamique méso- et sous-mé...
We have investigated the surface and subsurface submesoscale dynamics in the Gulf of Aden and the Gulf of Oman. Our results are based on the analyses of regional numerical simulations performed with a primitive equation model (HYCOM) at submesoscale permitting horizontal resolution. A model zoom for each gulf was embedded in a regional mesoscale-re...
Plain Language Summary
Numerical simulations of the ocean reveal the presence of numerous submesoscale eddies, vortices with radii smaller than, or equal to, 10 km. Nevertheless, their observations at depth are scarce because sampling their hydrological and dynamical structures requires very high resolution measurements. The present study presents...
The Omani Coastal Current (OCC) flowing northward along the southern coast of Oman during the summer monsoon is associated with an upwelling system. The mesoscale circulation of the western Arabian Sea is dominated by energetic mesoscale eddies down to about 1000 m depth. They drive the pathways of the upwelling water masses and the Persian Gulf Ou...
We investigate the surface and subsurface submesoscale dynamics in the Gulf of Aden and 1 the Gulf of Oman. Our results are based on the analyses of regional numerical simulations performed 2 with a primitive equation model (HYCOM) at submesoscale permitting horizontal resolution. A 3 model zoom for each gulf is embedded in a regional mesoscale-res...
The Omani Coastal Current (OCC) flowing northward along the southern coast of Oman 1 during the summer monsoon, is associated with an upwelling system. The mesoscale circulation 2 of the western Arabian Sea is dominated by energetic mesoscale eddies down to about 1000 meters 3 depth. They drive the pathways of the upwelling water masses and the Per...
The Red Sea Water enters the Gulf of Aden through the Strait of Bab El Mandeb as a density current. The Red Sea Water subsequently spreads into the Gulf of Aden under the influence of surface mesoscale eddies, which dominate the surface flow, of topographic features such as rift and capes, and of the monsoon regimes. The dynamics of a bottom densit...
The Red Sea Water enters the Gulf of Aden through the Strait of Bab El Mandeb as a density current. The Red Sea Water subsequently spreads into the Gulf of Aden under the influence of surface mesoscale eddies, which dominate the surface flow, of topographic features such as rift and capes, and of the monsoon regimes. The dynamics of a bottom densit...
Oceanic vortices are ubiquitous in the ocean. They dominate the sub-inertial energy spectrum, and their dynamics is key for the evolution of the water column properties. The merger of two like-signed coherent vortices, which ultimately results in the formation of a larger vortex, provides an efficient mechanism for the lateral mixing of water masse...
The Red Sea Water is a warm and salty water produced in the Red Sea by evaporation induced by strong solar radiation. This dense water mass exits the Red Sea through the Strait of Bab El Mandeb, and enters the Gulf of Aden as a density current between 400 and 1000 meter depth. In the Gulf of Aden, in situ and satellites observations have shown the...
Persian Gulf Water and Red Sea Water are salty and dense waters flowing at intermediate depths in the Gulf of Oman and the Gulf of Aden, respectively. Their spreading pathways are influence by mesoscale eddies that dominate the surface flow in both semi-enclosed basins. In situ measurements combined with altimetry indicate that Persian Gulf Water i...
The Persian Gulf Water and Red Sea Water are salty and dense waters recirculating at subsurface in the Gulf of Oman and the Gulf of Aden respectively, under the influence of mesoscale eddies which dominate the surface flow in both semi-enclosed basins. In situ measurements combined with altimetry indicate that the Persian Gulf Water is driven by me...
In the Arabian Sea, mesoscale eddies are prominent features of the circulation. They influence biological activities, tracer transport, and physical and chemical properties of the seawater. In particular, the pathways of salty water masses outflowing from the marginal seas are strongly impacted by the mesoscale eddies that evolve in the western par...
In the Northern Arabian Sea, the pathway of the salty Persian Gulf Water outflowing from the Persian Gulf is strongly impacted by the mesoscale and submesoscale features which evolve in the Sea of Oman and around the Arabian Peninsula. We use ARGO floats colocalized with eddies detected in the Arabian Sea for the period 2000-2015 from altimetric da...
We study the influence of bottom topography on the interaction of two identical vortices
in a two-layer, quasi-geostrophic model. The two vortices have piecewise-uniform potential vorticity
and are lying in the upper layer of the model. The topography is a smooth bottom slope. For two
cyclones, topography modifies the merger critical distance and t...
The effect of a bottom slope on the merger of two identical Rankine vortices is investigated in a two-dimensional, quasi-geostrophic, incompressible fluid. When two cyclones initially lie parallel to the slope, and more than two vortex diameters away from the slope, the critical merger distance is unchanged. When the cyclones are closer to the slope,...
Projects
Projects (2)
This project aims at better understanding how the outflows from the Persian Gulf and from the Red Sea spread out in the Arabian Sea, in particular under the influence of mesoscale surface eddies.
We study how the different elements of the regional circulation interact
mutually (upwellings, Rossby waves, Kelvin waves, eddies, coastal currents...etc) and how they modify the two outflows. In particular we
are interested by the submesoscale features which emerge from this
interaction.
This project started in 1999 with the GOGP experiment at sea, which
was used in Stephane Pous' PhD thesis (and papers available here).
Then the experiments PHYSINDIEN 2011, 2014 and 2019 were carried out. They were used in Pierre L'Hegaret's, Mathieu Morvan's and Charly De Marez's PhD theses. Numerical modeling was used extensively in these PhDs with ROMS and with HYCOM, in particular in Clement Vic's PhD thesis.
Stephane's and Mathieu's PhDs were funded by SHOM
Pierre's, Clement's and Charly's PhDs were funded by the DGA
They were carried out at LOPS (UBO, Brest, France) under the supervision of Xavier Carton.
using in situ, satellite data, regional model output and theoretical models, we study the dynamics of the outflows from the Persian Gulf and from the Red Sea into the Arabian Sea.
Comparisons of flows, mechanisms and results are performed with our case studies of the Mediterranean outflow into the Gulf of Cadiz
