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Jim Thomson

Senior Principal Oceanographer

Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Email

jthomson@apl.washington.edu

Phone

206-616-0858

Research Interests

Environmental Fluid Mechanics, Ocean Surface Waves, Marine Renewable Energy (tidal and wave), Coastal and Nearshore Processes, Ocean Instrumentation

Biosketch

Dr. Thomson studies waves, currents, and turbulence by combining field observations and remote sensing techniques

Education

B.A. Physics, Middlebury College, 2000

Ph.D. Physical Oceanography, MIT/WHOI, 2006

Projects

Persistent Measurements of Surface Waves in Landfast Ice Using Fiber Optic Telecommunication Cables

The high-resolution data collected during this research will help address fundamental questions about wave attenuation in landfast ice and breakup. The research is motivated by two questions: (1) What is the spatial and temporal variability of wave attenuation in landfast sea ice? (2) What drives landfast breakup? (Collaborative research with M. Smith, WHOI)

30 Aug 2023

Hurricane Coastal Impacts

APL-UW scientists are collaborating with 10 research teams to tackle the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) project goals: to enable better understanding and predictive ability of hurricane impacts, to serve and protect coastal communities. The APL-UW team will contribute air-deployed buoys to provide real time observations of hurricane waves and wave forcing that can be ingested by modeling groups, improving forecasts and validating hindcasts.

14 Dec 2021

Wave Glider Observations in the Southern Ocean

A Wave Glider autonomous surface vehicle will conduct a summer-season experiment to investigate ocean–shelf exchange on the West Antarctic Peninsula and frontal air–sea interaction over both the continental shelf and open ocean.

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4 Sep 2019

Southern Ocean climate change is at the heart of the ocean's response to anthropogenic forcing. Variations in South Polar atmospheric circulation patterns, fluctuations in the strength and position of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, and the intertwining intermediate deep water cells of the oceanic meridional overturning circulation have important impacts on the rate of ocean carbon sequestration, biological productivity, and the transport of heat to the melting continental ice shelves.

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Videos

microSWIFTs: Tiny Oceanographic Floats Measure Extreme Coastal Conditions

These small, inexpensive ocean drifters are the latest generation of the Surface Wave Instrument Float with Tracking (SWIFT) platform developed at APL-UW. They are being used in several collaborative research experiments to increase the density of nearshore wave observations.

19 Apr 2022

Using a Wave Energy Converter for UUV Recharge

This project demonstrates the interface required to operate, dock, and wirelessly charge an uncrewed underwater vehicle with a wave energy converter.

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11 Apr 2022

Uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) predominantly use onboard batteries for energy, limiting mission duration based on the amount of stored energy that can be carried by the vehicle. Vehicle recharge requires recovery using costly, human-supported vessel operations. The ocean is full of untapped energy in the form of waves that, when converted to electrical energy by a wave energy converter (WEC), can be used locally to recharge UUVs without human intervention. In this project we designed and developed a coupled WEC-UUV system, with emphasis on the systems developed to interface the UUV to the WEC.

Mapping Underwater Turbulence with Sound

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9 Apr 2018

To dock at a terminal, large Washington State ferries use their powerful engines to brake, generating a lot of turbulence. Doppler sonar instruments are capturing an accurate picture of the turbulence field during docking procedures and how it affects terminal structures and the seabed. This research is a collaborative effort between APL-UW and the UW College of Engineering, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

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Publications

2000-present and while at APL-UW

The 2019 marine heatwave at Ocean Station Papa: A multi-disciplinary assessment of ocean conditions and impacts on marine ecosystems

Kohlman, C., and 9 others including J. Thomson, "The 2019 marine heatwave at Ocean Station Papa: A multi-disciplinary assessment of ocean conditions and impacts on marine ecosystems," J. Geophys. Res., 129, doi:10.1029/2023JC020167, 2024.

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21 Jun 2024

In the past decade, two large marine heatwaves (MHWs) formed in the northeast Pacific near Ocean Station Papa (OSP), one of the oldest oceanic time series stations. Physical, biogeochemical, and biological parameters observed at OSP from 2013 to 2020 are used to assess ocean response and potential impacts on marine life from the 2019 northeast Pacific MHW. The 2019 MHW reached peak surface and subsurface temperature anomalies in the summertime and had both coastal, impacting fisheries, and offshore consequences that could potentially affect multiple trophic levels in the Gulf of Alaska. In the Gulf of Alaska, the 2019 MHW was preceded by calm and stratified upper ocean conditions, which preconditioned the enhanced surface warming in late spring and early summer. The MHW coincided with lower dissolved inorganic carbon and higher pH of surface waters relative to the 2013–2020 period. A spike in the summertime chlorophyll followed by a decrease in surface macronutrients suggests increased productivity in the well-lit stratified upper ocean during summer 2019. More blue whale calls were recorded at OSP in 2019 compared to the prior year. This study shows how the utility of long-term, continuous oceanographic data sets and analysis with an interdisciplinary lens is necessary to understand the potential impact of MHWs on marine ecosystems.

Statistics of bubble plumes generated by breaking surface waves

Derakhti, M., J. Thomson, C. Bassett, M. Malila, and J.T. Kirby, "Statistics of bubble plumes generated by breaking surface waves," J. Geophys. Res., 129, doi:10.1029/2023JC019753, 2024.

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17 May 2024

We examine the dependence of the penetration depth and fractional surface area (e.g., whitecap coverage) of bubble plumes generated by breaking surface waves on various wind and wave parameters over a wide range of sea state conditions in the North Pacific Ocean, including storms with sustained winds up to 22 m s-1 and significant wave heights up to 10 m. Our observations include arrays of freely drifting SWIFT buoys together with shipboard systems, which enabled concurrent high-resolution measurements of wind, waves, bubble plumes, and turbulence. We estimate bubble plume penetration depth from echograms extending to depths of more than 30 m in a surface-following reference frame collected by downward-looking echosounders integrated onboard the buoys. Our observations indicate that mean and maximum bubble plume penetration depths exceed 10 and 30 m beneath the surface during high winds, respectively, with plume residence times of many wave periods. They also establish strong correlations between bubble plume depths and wind speeds, spectral wave steepness, and whitecap coverage. Interestingly, we observe a robust linear correlation between plume depths, when scaled by the total significant wave height, and the inverse of wave age. However, scaled plume depths exhibit non-monotonic variations with increasing wind speeds. Additionally, we explore the dependencies of the combined observations on various non-dimensional predictors used for whitecap coverage estimation. This study provides the first field evidence of a direct relation between bubble plume penetration depth and whitecap coverage, suggesting that the volume of bubble plumes could be estimated by remote sensing.

Measuring turbulence from wave-following platforms

Zeiden, K., and J. Thomson, "Measuring turbulence from wave-following platforms," In Proc., IEEE/OES 13th Current, Waves and Turbulence Measurement (CWTM), 18-20 March 2024, Wanchese, NC, doi:10.1109/CWTM61020.2024.10526345 (IEEE, 2024).

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15 May 2024

Autonomous surface platforms equipped with pulse-coherent high-resolution (HR) ADCPs are a promising tool for measuring turbulence and estimating turbulent dissipation rates, ε(z), close to the air-sea interface. However, surface gravity waves generate significant bias in ε(z) if not sufficiently separated from the turbulent signal. In a previous study, the authors developed a method of isolating wave orbital velocities from the data using empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs). Low-mode EOFs had characteristics of surface gravity waves, while higher-mode EOFs had characteristics of turbulence. After filtering empirical wave profiles constructed from the low-mode EOFs from the data, resultant ε(z) were in close agreement with law-of-the-wall scaling during quiescent conditions. In this study, we further validate the EOF-filtering technique by comparing EOFs of the HR ADCP data with those computed from synthetic wave data which does not contain turbulence. As expected, low-mode EOFs of the synthetic data are in strong agreement with those of the real data, while high-mode EOFs reflect only noise due to the absence of turbulence. Wave profiles constructed from the low-mode EOFs are then used to quantify the potential for bias in ε(z) if wave velocities are not sufficiently filtered from the data.

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In The News

Why physicists are air-dropping buoys into the paths of hurricanes

New Scientist, James Dinneen

A sprawling research program aims to improve hurricane forecasts by collecting data at the chaotic interface of ocean and atmosphere.

20 Sep 2024

NOAA researchers study sea ice retreat, link to harmful algal blooms

The Nome Nuggest, Colin A. Warren

Last week a team of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration researchers arrived in Nome to launch the third year of an investigation that seeks to study sea ice retreat and chart phytoplankton in the northern Bering Sea.

14 Jun 2024

Hyperspectral cameras and high-tech buoys: Inside NOAA's Arctic AIR mission

KNOM Radio, Nome, AK, Ben Townsend

A project called 'Arctic AIR' is back in the Bering and Chukchi seas this summer to conduct studies of sea ice retreat and phytoplankton. The researchers seek to better understand rapid changes occurring in the Arctic's marine ecosystem due to climate change.

7 Jun 2024

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