Dr. Sam Brenner
Postdoctoral Researcher, Brown University
Areas of interest: Floe-scale variability, inland and coastal waters, momentum transfer across the atmosphere-ice-ocean interface, and small scale upper ocean variability
Past work
My past work has included the study of inland waters, where I investigated the role of lake geometry in controlling free barotropic modes. Subsequently, I shifted my focus to the study of polar physical oceanography, with an interest in understanding the role of sea ice in mediating momentum transfer from the atmosphere to the ocean. Using in situ observations from the Beaufort Sea, I have explored topics related to sea ice roughness, inertial oscillations, surface gravity waves, ice-edge fronts, and novel methods for in situ upper-ocean observations.
Current role
Since July 2022 I have been a post-doctoral researcher at Brown University, studying the interactions of sea ice with the upper ocean as part of the Scale-Aware Sea Ice Project. My work is focused on using process-level numerical modelling to understand the role of floe-scale effects and surface heterogeneity in the control of exchanges across atmosphere/ice/ocean boundaries, and the impact of ice-ocean interaction processes on climate-scale modelling.
Future plans
My ongoing and future work will continue to advance questions about the importance of a range of small-scale processes in the ice-ocean boundary layer, such as surface wave growth in partial sea ice cover, biases associated with the “mosaic method” for calculating interfacial fluxes, the selective frequency-response filtering by the sea ice of momentum transfer, and others.
Highlights
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Scale-Dependent Air-Sea Exchange in the Polar Oceans
Figure from Brenner et al., 2020 showing how scale mismatches between ocean flow (blue colourmap and background vectors) and ice velocity (vector arrows over ice floes) contribute to boundary-layer turbulent production (cyan/red colormap).
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2019 SODA cruise
Photo taken during the 2019 SODA cruise to the Beaufort Sea on the icebreaker USCGC Healy.
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2019 SODA cruise
Photo taken during the 2019 SODA cruise to the Beaufort Sea on the icebreaker USCGC Healy.
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The evolution of a shallow front in the Arctic marginal ice zone
Figure from Brenner et al., 2020 showing the evolution of a front seen in high-resolution shipboard measurements of upper ocean temperature and salinity in an “ice-following” reference frame in the marginal ice zone.
