The offshore wind energy sector has rapidly expanded over the past two decades, providing a renewable energy solution for coastal nations. Sector development has been led in Europe, but is growing globally. Most developments to date have been in well-mixed, i.e., unstratified, shallow-waters near to shore. Sector growth is, for the first time, pushing developments to deep water, into a brand new environment: seasonally stratif...

Turbulent mixing is a key process in the transport of heat, salt, and nutrients in the marine environment, with fluxes commonly derived directly from estimates of the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, ε. Time series of ε estimates are therefore useful in helping to identify and quantify key biogeochemical processes. The velocity structure function method can be used to determine time series of ε estimates using along-...

Historically, the Arctic Ocean has been considered an ocean of low variability and weak turbulent mixing. However, the decline in seasonal sea ice cover over the past couple of decades has led to increased coupling between the atmosphere and the ocean, with potential enhancement of turbulent mixing. Here, we review studies that allow identifying energy sources and pathways that lead to turbulent mixing in an increasingly ice-f...

Measurements of the intra‐tidal and spring‐neap variation in the vertical flux of nitrate into the base of the sub‐surface chlorophyll maximum (SCM) were made at the shelf edge of the Celtic Sea, a region with strong internal mixing driven by an internal tide. The neap tide daily mean nitrate flux was 1.3 (0.9‐1.8, 95% confidence interval) mmol m ‐2 d ‐1 . The spring tide flux was initially estimated as 3.5 (2.3‐5.2, 95% confi...

Observations of the vertical structure of density, concentrations of chlorophyll a and nitrate, and turbulent dissipation rates were made over a period of 25 h in a well‐stratified shelf region in the Western English Channel, between neap and spring tides. Maximum turbulent dissipation at the base of the thermocline occurred almost 5 h after maximum tidal currents. This turbulence aids phytoplankton growth by supplying bottom‐...

In this paper, we consider the interpretation of measurements of vertical velocity and backscatter signal intensity, made using an acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP) mounted on the seabed, at a position on the Hebridean Continental Shelf. The existence of vertically migrating scatterers is inferred from both the backscatter signal intensity and vertical velocity data, which indicate migration rates of 2–3 cm s −1 , and s...