Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences awarded $1,036,512 to the University of Washington under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) on October 1, 2026, for a collaborative research initiative examining convective and shear instability pathways to turbulence in internal solitary waves. The project, led by a U.S.-Taiwan research team, will deliver high-resolution oceanographic observations and advanced numerical simulations of turbulence and mixing processes associated with shoaling internal solitary waves in the South China Sea. Using a 600-meter towed sensor chain equipped with temperature, conductivity, pressure, and velocity instrumentation, the research team will capture fine-scale water mass properties and turbulent mixing estimates during convective and shear instabilities. The project will also produce turbulence-resolving massively parallel numerical simulations to characterize the detailed structure and dynamics of these instabilities, with integrated wave-tracking capability across both observational and computational datasets.

Deliverables from this five-year project (completion scheduled September 30, 2031) will advance understanding of entrainment, turbulent mixing, and mass transport processes critical to marine ecosystem dynamics and ocean shelf and slope region energy dissipation. The collaborative effort combines empirical data collection with computational modeling to quantify the onset and evolution of convective and shear instabilities, with findings applicable to internal wave processes globally. No subawards are planned for this project.