PhD. Candidate Chris Flanary and Dr. George Maul, Professor and Head of the Department of Marine and Environmental Systems, College of Engineering, FIT along with FIT Oceanography alumni and President of RDSEA International Rick Cole recently deploy ADCPs off of Ft Pierce and Sebastian Inlet, Florida aboard MV THUNDERFORCE. Upwelling events have been observed along the central east Florida shelf since 1944. This region is data poor oceanographically. Acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCP) deployed in 8~m depth offshore Sebastian Inlet State Park, Brevard County, Florida have recorded frequent summer cold water upwelling events. A 2003 upwelling event recorded at this site had a water temperature decrease of 15°C as compared to pre and post upwelling water temperatures. Profiled current velocities will be collected over a 3~mo deployment period during the 2011 and 2012 summer at the inner, mid and outer-shelf. The water velocities and water temperatures collected by the ADCPs will provide information on the path of the upwelled cold water masses onto the shelf and into the near-shore. ROMS, a 3-D primitive equation ocean model will be used to simulate near-shore cold water upwellings along the central east Florida shelf using forcing from larger oceanographic and meteorological models. The collected in situ ADCP data along with Gulf Stream transport values will be diagnostically compared to the ROMS simulations to confirm if an ocean model can accurately simulate upwelling in the nearshore.
RDSEA Deploys in the Atlantic with Florida Tech