He will contrast the problems and successful approaches in these communities with those in other communities, and will draft recommendations for interagency coordination and policy changes. The ocean plays a major role in weather and climate. Modeling of the ocean, however, is a formidable challenge. It's a turbulent fluid with important elements interacting on scales ranging from global down to the order of a few meters. Based on the Navier Stokes equations on the sphere, the new ocean circulation model is a significant step toward the goal of the Center for Global Change Science to improve the accuracy of climate-change predictions.
Current analyses indicate that the ocean is the largest carbon sink in the climate system.
While many seaside property owners view seawalls as a great way to protect against erosion, state regulators maintain the piles of quarry rocks actually cause erosion. Madsen built a miniature beach in which one section of a water-filled basin had a stone wall fronted with sand and the other had just a sandy dune. Using a programmable wave-maker to simulate natural waves and their seasonal variations, he simultaneously pelted the seawall and the dune with identical waves and then monitored the erosion. With regard to the beach system as a whole, results show virtually no difference in erosion and accretion for the protected and unprotected areas, except for a lack of erosion right behind the seawall. This suggests that seawalls may not necessarily deserve their bad reputation, Madsen says.