Tabor Academy will host a Science at Work Lecture Series Event entitled “Oceanic Eddies and the Monsoon” on April 28 at 6:30 pm at the Tabor Academy Stroud Academic Center, 232 Front Street, Marion.
Dr. Amit Tandon is the next Science at Work Lecturer at Tabor Academy.
Dr. Tandon, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the College of Engineering and the School of Marine Science and Technology at UMass Dartmouth, is also a physical oceanographer. Tandon studies mixing of the upper ocean at multiple ranges from millimeters to hundreds of kilometers in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans.
The study of ocean mixing and its interaction with the lower atmosphere is critical for the prediction of tropical weather systems like the monsoons. Monsoons and tropical cyclones impact the safety of ships at sea in the Indian Ocean, as well as the economy and life of billions in Asia. Monsoons also have a direct impact on the global weather, and therefore also affect us. However, predicting monsoons remains an unsolved challenge.
Tandon is one of the chief scientists of the U.S.-India collaboration called ASIRI-OMM (Air Sea Interactions in the Northern Indian Ocean-Regional Initiative – Ocean Mixing and Monsoons) with ten oceanographic institutions in the U.S. and eight institutions in India. He is leading over 50 scientists who are collectively trying to unlock the oceanic mysteries in the northern Indian Ocean and its connection to the monsoon in this international effort.
The evening lecture on “Oceanic Eddies and the Monsoon” will include a tank demonstration of ocean circulation driven by density contrast in the ocean, combined with some results from Tandon’s recent research in the Northern Indian Ocean.
Tandon is a Fulbright specialist scholar awardee and enjoys tabletop “weather in a tank” experiments. His research is funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the U.S. National Science Foundation. For more information, see http://www.umassd.edu/engineering/mne/people/facultyandstaff/amittandon/.
He has been published in Journal of Physical Oceanography, Ocean Modeling, Science (Online), Deep Sea Research, Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, Journal of Fluid Mechanics and Physica-D.
This lecture is free and open to the public.