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Fluid Dynamics

Many people consider the porch at Walsh Cottage at WHOI to be a sacred place. Each summer since 1959, some of the greatest oceanographers, physicists, and mathematicians have gathered here with promising new students in a fellowship program to explore the fundamental motions and physics of oceans, rivers, magma, atmospheres, and other fluid media—a field called geophysical fluid dynamics. The program’s annual Sears Public Lecture is tonight at 5 p.m. in Redfield Auditorium. Susan Lozier of Duke University will discuss the “overturning” of the North Atlantic Ocean, a phenomenon that sends cold, dense water to the abyss, propels the global ocean current system, and regulates Earth’s climate.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)