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GFD Lecture Series

WHOI Physical Oceanography Department weekly lectures:
https://www.whoi.edu/what-we-do/understand/departments-centers-labs/po/po-events/

 

2026 Lecture Schedule

Lectures/Seminars are held in Walsh Cottage in Woods Hole Village

PRINCIPAL LECTURERS

Jennifer MacKinnon, University of California San Diego
Bruce Sutherland, University of Alberta

PRINCIPAL LECTURES

WEEK ONE

Monday, June 22

10:00 a.m. Bruce Sutherland
Fundamentals 1: Equations, stratification and interfacial internal waves with no rotation

2:00 p.m. Jennifer MacKinnon
Fundamentals 2: Waves in uniform stratiification, near inertial waves, and relevance to ocean

Tuesday, June 23
10:00 a.m.  Jennifer MacKinnon
Oceanic IGW 1: Historical beginnings, abyssal recipes, energy budgets and observed spectra

2:00 p.m. Bruce Sutherland
Oceanic IGW 2: Dealing with nonuniform stratification - introduction to WKB theory

Wednesday, June 24
10:00 a.m. Bruce Sutherland
IGW Generation 1: Oscillating cylinder, flow over hills, lee waves and other non-rotating phenomena

2:00 p.m. Jennifer MacKinnon
IGW Generation 2: Generation near inertial frequencies, ocean observations

Thursday, June 25
10:00 a.m.  Bruce Sutherland
Transport by IGW 1: Stokes drift, Eulerian and Lagrangian flows, pseudomomentum

2:00 p.m. Jennifer MacKinnon
Transport by IGW 2: ray tracing with varying Coriolis, depth,  currents, and wave action

Friday, June 26
10:00 a.m. Bruce Sutherland
Energy Cascade Mechanisms 1: Overturning, nonlinear wave-wave interactions, interactions with bathymetry

WEEK TWO

Monday, June 29
10:00 a.m. Jennifer MacKinnon
Energy Cascade Mechanisms 2: More wave-wave interactions, the GM continuum, wave-eddy interactions

2:00 p.m. Bruce Sutherland
Fast Time-Scale Phenomena 1: Stratified turbulence, stirring and mixing, momentum deposition

Tuesday, June 30
10:00 a.m. Jennifer MacKinnon
Fast Time-Scale Phenomena 2: Equatorial waves, turbulence generation and absorption

SEMINARS

**seminars start at 11:00 A.M.*

Wednesday, July 1
A tale of two potential vorticities: The drivers of zonal flows in giant planets
Loren Matilsky, University of California Santa Cruz

Thursday, July 2

11:00 a.m.
Geostrophic turbulent convection: Scalings and large scale patterns
Xiaojue Zhu, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

2:00 p.m.
Emergent large-scale dynamics in stably and unstably stratified flows
Philipp Vieweg, University of Münster

Friday, July 3
HOLIDAY

WEEK THREE

Monday, July 6
Wave turbulence insights from reduced mathematical models
Jim Thomas,Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

Tuesday, July 7
Exact coherent structures and stability of shear double-diffusive convection
Chang Liu, University of Connecticut

Wednesday, July 8
Planar intrusions from a constant source: In search of a model
Anja Slim, Monash University

Thursday, July 9
Untangling waves and mean flows using Lagrangian filtering 
Lois Baker, University of Edinburgh

Friday, July 10 (Zoom not available)
Anomalous wave statistics induced by abrupt depth changes
Nick Moore, Colgate University

WEEK FOUR

Monday, July 13
Horizontal diffusivities over a slope: monster eddies, layer asymmetries and other oddities
Joe LaCasce, University of Oslo

Tuesday, July 14
TBD
Beth Wingate, University of Exeter

Wednesday, July 15
Double-diffusive layers in giant planets
Pascale Garaud, University of California, Santa Cruz

Thursday, July 16
TBD
Renske Gelderloos, Delft University of Technology

Friday, July 17
Jets and superrotation in deep and shallow planetary atmospheres”
Geoff Vallis, University of Exeter

WEEK FIVE

Monday, July 20
TBD
Elizabeth Hicks, Northwestern University

5:00 P.M. SEARS PUBLIC LECTURE - REDFIELD AUDITORIUM
TBD
Stephen Monismith, Stanford University

Tuesday, July 21
TBD
Wanying Kang, MIT

Wednesday, July 22
Scale-dependent representations of wave effects on mean flow and their consequences for instability
Lulabel Ruiz Seitz, Brown University

Thursday, July 23
TBD
Stephen Monismith, Stanford University

Friday, July 24
TBD
Michael Le Bars, IRPHE

WEEK SIX

Monday, July 27
TBD
Theresa Oehmke, University of New Hampshire

Tuesday, July 28
TBD
Baole Wen, New York Institute of Technology

Wednesday, July 29
TBD
Mac Huang, New York University, Shanghai

Thursday, July 30
TBD
Keaton Burns, MIT

Friday, July 31
TBD
Andrew Lawrie, University of Bristol

WEEK SEVEN

NO SEMINARS

WEEK EIGHT

FELLOWS' PRESENTATIONS

TBD