Surface Drift in the Ocean with Application to Floating Material, Pollutants and Biota

Dear Colleagues,

Oceanic currents are a fundamental component of the Earth system through their ability to redistribute heat from the Equator to the poles, and more generally, to transport physical, chemical, biological, and anthropogenic matter and properties across the World Ocean. The strongest currents, which are usually found near the ocean surface, are driven by a combination of wind and pressure gradients in the open ocean, sometimes complemented by other drivers such as tides or breaking surface waves, most notably in the coastal zone that is characterized by particularly complex hydrodynamical processes and land-air-sea interactions. Even in the open ocean, near-surface currents are associated with oceanographic processes acting on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales, from submesoscale and mesoscale turbulence to large-scale wind-driven gyres and thermohaline circulation and over periods of days to decades.

Floating material of various origins including pollutants and biota (e.g., plastic debris, harmful algal blooms, Sargassum algae and other rafts, oil spills) are directly carried by surface ocean currents, sometimes over large distances and long periods, but also through the direct action of wind stress, i.e., windage. Understanding how such material is carried and dispersed by currents, winds, and other geophysical phenomena is paramount for a broad range of applications including, but not limited to search and rescue operations, operational monitoring and forecasting of floating material drift.

For this Special Issue, we invite contributions from the research community working on topics related to surface ocean drift to submit original research papers, as well as review articles and short communications. We welcome numerical and observational approaches, both in situ and remote sensing. More fundamental studies of Lagrangian particle drift or Eulerian passive tracer transport and mixing are also of interest.

Dr. Ali Belmadani
Dr. Jean-Philippe Maréchal
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Surface drift
• ocean currents
• windage
• Lagrangian floats
• Eulerian tracer
• plastic debris
• Sargassum
• oil spill
• ocean modeling
• ocean observations