PEACH

The Cape Hatteras coastal region off of North Carolina showcases a unique biogeographic boundary, driven by convergent shelfwater flow and influence from the Gulf Stream. Recent Gulf Stream deviations in position, as well as sea level rise north of Cape Hatteras show potential for large shifts in atmospheric/oceanic forcings, and their effects on shelf and open ocean water exchange is understudied. Furthermore, the varying position of the Hatteras Front, this convergence, signals for a recharacterization of the Cape Hatteras coastal region as more of a “mixing zone” rather than a frontal system.

I joined Dr. Harvey Seim’s Observational Physical Oceanography Lab in my spring semester freshman year at UNC (2023). In 2017-2018, my PI led the Processes driving Exchange at Cape Hatteras (PEACH) Program, where several scientists made use of various observational instruments to better understand seawater exchange between the continental shelf and open ocean near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

I am using data collected from PEACH to study the hydrographic variability of the shelf near Cape Hatteras. This study uses underwater Slocum glider to observe the physical and biological characteristics of the water column.

You can view my visualization scripts and preliminary figures here.

iLOSCAR

The burning of fossil fuels since the start of the Industrial Revolution has led to increased CO2 emissions, reaching levels higher than any time in the past 2 million years. In addition to reducing emissions through policy initiatives and transitioning to renewable energy sources, implementing technologies for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has received growing attention.

In Summer 2024, I joined Dr. Shuang Zhang’s CArbon Cycle and Earth Environment (CACEE) Lab at Texas A&M University as a part of an REU with the Department of Oceanography. Here, I worked with Dr. Zhang and PhD student Shihan Li to look at how different methods of CDR impact the ocean and atmosphere. Understanding how ocean and atmospheric tracers are impacted by CDR is an important contribution towards building a framework for monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of CDR projects.

Our medium for studying this is the interactive Long-term Ocean-atmosphere-Sediment CArbon cycle Reservoir (iLOSCAR) model, developed here at Texas A&M University. We used iLOSCAR to run simulations over more than 500 years to see how ocean/atmosphere tracers such as pCO₂, temperature, pH, and saturation states of aragonite and calcite change when we introduce fluxes attributed to CDR. iLOSCAR has both an inverse and forward component, and features a web-based UI that makes running the simulations simpler.

More work on iLOSCAR can be found here.