Jess Mead Silvester

OS Ocean Sciences

The 2017 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Jess Mead Silvester for the poster/PICO entitled:

Mixing and Water Mass Transformation along the Antarctic Continental Slope (Mead Silvester, J.; Lenn, Y.-D.; Polton, J. A.; Phillips, H.; Rippeth, T.; Morales-Maquedas, M.)

Click here to download the poster/PICO file.

Jess Mead Silvester is a final-year PhD student at the National Oceanography Centre in Liverpool and the School of Ocean Sciences at Bangor University, where she is based.

Her research is on turbulent mixing and water mass transformations and pathways over the continental slope near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

During her PhD, she has investigated:

• (i) the role of tides in driving intermittent, intense turbulent mixing (exchange) between water-masses and overturning cells in the Southern Ocean where they can influence upwelling rates and the strength of the global overturning circulation;
• (ii) eddy-tide interactions that allow heat dispersion over the Western Antarctic Peninsula’s continental shelf where marine glacier melt is sensitive to ocean heat content;
• (iii) The relative roles of (1) local seasonal sea-ice production and (2) dense Weddell Sea water pathways across the South Scotia Ridge in bringing dense waters into contact with warmer water masses (CDW) over the continental slope along the Antarctic Peninsula. Here, they can interact (transform) and convect downslope, contributing to Antarctic Bottom Water formation and ventilation.