Proceedings: USA-Mexico Workshop on the Deepwater Physical Oceanography of the Gulf of Mexico

摘要

The activities of the offshore oil & gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico have intensified and extended further offshore in recent decades, creating new challenges for marine resource and environmental management and new opportunities for marine scientific research. These opportunities include the study of the circulation of the Gulf of Mexico in its full glory of powerful mean current jets, fronts, and mesoscale eddies and their interactions with steep bottom topography; the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River plume; and the passage of tropical cyclones in the summer and cold fronts in the winter. Observations and numerical modeling of the Gulfs circulation suggest that observations and models must be linked to generate sound estimates of the spatially complex and temporally variable circulation. American and Mexican offshore oil & gas exploration and production has spread from the inner continental shelf regions to the continental slope and now to the deep Gulf. In recent years, both American and Mexican scientific investigations of the circulation have extended into deeper waters, too. Hence, American and Mexican offshore industries, environmentalists, and research scientists share an interest in a comprehensive description, understanding, and predictive capability for the Gulf circulation. With both the USA and Mexico planning further extensive field and modeling studies in the near-future, it was thought timely to conduct a workshop to discuss recent results and coordinate plans, with the hope that more of the space-time variability could be characterized than otherwise would be possible by either country alone.