Physical, Littoral and Coastal Oceanography team (OPLC)

Manager : Charles-Antoire Guérin

Improving our knowledge of the ocean state and its predictability requires a thorough description of the physical processes that are involved in ocean dynamics through a large continuum of scales. Investigating these processes at different scales in the ocean and at its upper and lower boundaries is the main objective of the OPLC research team at the MIO laboratory. Documenting the interactions between scales is a major focus of the team because such interactions are generally poorly understood and, thus, neglected or empirically represented [Ed.1] in ocean models. The perspective of scale interactions dictates the activities of our team, the members of which have skills that cover a wide range of fields in the areas of physical modelling and experimentation. In the context of global change, the environmental and societal applications of the aforementioned fundamental research take a growing role in the activities of the team, with a specific transverse thematic approach now devoted to this research at the MIO laboratory.

The aim of the laboratory's Physical, Coastal and Marine Oceanography (OPLC) team is to study multi-scale processes and their interactions in ocean dynamics and with the atmosphere. The interaction between these different scales remains poorly understood and is therefore often neglected in models, or represented empirically. This issue raises a number of open questions that the team's expertise, covering all scales, enables it to address. Furthermore, in a context of global change, the environmental and societal applications of this research are an integral part of the OPLC team's activities, through theme 3 as well as via the laboratory's cross-disciplinary axes.