Statement on Research
General Goals
As the junior NSERC/MARTEC/MSC Industrial Research Chair, my
main research objective is to collaborate with the senior chair
Dr. Greatbatch on the development of high-resolution ocean modelling
systems for the eastern Canadian seaboard. These modelling systems
include prognostically evolving temperature, salinity and sea-ice.
My other research interests include nonlinear dynamics of coastal
currents and retention and advection of chemical and biological
materials in the ocean.
Research Areas
1. Physical processes over shelf seas and coastal waters
2. Numerical modeling and two-way interactive nesting
3. Retention and advection of chemical and biological materials in the ocean.
Specific Research Interests
1. Development and application of the semi-prognostic method and related
techniques for improving the utility of ocean circulation models
2. Development of a new nesting technique based on the semi-prognostic
method
3. Numerical study of seasonal circulation over the eastern Canadian
seaboard.
4. Nonlinear dynamics of the Gaspe Current
5. Numerical study of ecological connections among reefs over the Meso-
American Barrier Reef System (MBRS) of the northwest Caribbean Sea.
6. Barotropic and baroclinic ocean response to fast moving storms.
7. Development of a high-resolution ocean circulation model for Lunenburg
Bay, as part of CMEP.
8. Air-sea flux of chlorofluorocarbons and carbon dioxide in response to
climate forcing, as part of SOLAS.
9. Effects of surface heating/cooling, sea-ice and freshwater runoff on the
general circulation and temperature/salinity distribution on the eastern
Canadian shelf.
List of Research Projects
1. NSERC/MARTEC/MSC Industrial Research Chair Program
(Greatbatch and Sheng).
2. Regional scale ecological connections among reefs (Sale, Sheng, Hatcher,
Ruddick and two others).
3. Development of a high-resolution ocean circulation model for Lunenburg
Bay, as part of CMEP (Cullen, Thompson,Ritchie, Hay, Sheng and
others)
4. Air-sea flux of carbon dioxide in response to the climate forcing, as part
of SOLAS (Azetso-Scott, Sheng and three others).
5. Sensitivity study on the numerical simulation of passive tracers using an
ocean general circulation model (Sheng, Wright and Jones).
Future Research Directions
1. To use numerical models to improve our understanding of the dynamic
processes in the coastal and shelf seas.
2. To determine how surface heating/cooling, sea-ice and freshwater
runoff affect the general circulation and temperature/salinity
distribution on the eastern Canadian shelf.
3. To investigate the effects of physical processes on chemical and
biological
distributions in estuaries and shelf seas.
4. To develop a coupled atmosphere/ocean/ice modelling system for
marine environmental prediction over the eastern Canadian sea-board.
Collaborations
The Department of Oceanography is a multi-disciplinary research
department of international stature. It provides genuine opportunities
of collaboration for a new faculty number. I have taken a very active
approach to collaborate with colleagues in this department and those at
other Canadian Universities and international institutions.
- Close collaboration with the senior chair Dr. Richard
Greatbatch in the key research areas outlined in the proposal,
including the development of new monthly climatology (Geshelin et al.,
2000), semi-prognostic method (Sheng et al., 2001), barotropic waves
generated by moving storms (Mercer, et al., 2001), and numerical study
of seasonal circulation in the northwest Atlantic.
- Continuous collaboration and coordination with
Drs. Keith Thompson and Josko Bobanovic on the development of
prototype operational forecast systems.
- Collaboration with Drs. Dan Wright, Peter
Jones and Kumiko Azetsu-Scott at BIO in the numerical study of
the passive tracers in the Labrador Sea (Sheng et al., in prep).
- Collaboration with Drs. Harold Ritchie and
Serge Desjardins and with Mr. Doug Mercer of the
Meteorological
Service of Canada to study the ocean response to wind and pressure
forcing produced by atmospheric circulation models (Mercer, Sheng,
Greatbatch and Bobanovic, 2001).
- Collaboration with Dr. Jim Chuang of DalTech to
parallelize the CANDIE code.
- Interaction with Drs. Chris Taggart and Chris
Reiss on examining the implications of baroclinic circulation over
Western Bank on the Scotian Shelf for larval fish transport and
retention (Reiss, et al., 2000).
- Interaction with Drs. Jeff Runge and Bruno
Zakardjian of Institut des Sciences de la Mer de Rimousk on the
numerical simulation of life history of the copepod over the Gulf of
St. Lawrence and Scotian Shelf (Zakardjian et al., 2001).
- Collaboration with Dr. Peter Sale of University of
Windsor and Drs. Barry Ruddick and
Bruce Hatcher of
Dalhousie University in submitting a multidisciplinary research
proposal to the NSERC CRO program for studying the ecological
connection among the coral reefs.
- Interaction with Professor Huiding Wu at the National Research Center
for Marine Environment Forecasts, China, on sea-ice modelling and tidal
circulation in the Bohai Sea.
- Interaction with Professor Changkung Zhang of Hehai University in
Nanjing, China, on estuary circulation.