Speaker: Jeffrey Poort
The working group « Marine heat flow »is new since 2023. The primary focus is to identify the scientific problems that can be addressed by the acquisition of shallow sub-seafloor thermal gradients and thermal conductivity data, collectively used to quantify conductive heat flow. However, the group will address the full scope of problems and techniques in data acquisition as well as the nuances in understanding the processes that involve the quantification of energy and fluid fluxes, again requiring knowledge of the thermal state deduced from observations that include heat flow, sub-bottom temperature, and thermophysical rock and fluid properties. The renaissance of interest in marine heat flow mirrors the shift to multidisciplinary approaches to science problems in the wider community, such as the recent focus on using heat transport as a tracer of other processes. We identified three major questions the marine working group should focus on:
- What are the fundamental science questions to be addressed using marine heat flow data (among other information and methods) in the next decades?
- Which technical capabilities will be required to address these questions, and how can these capabilities be developed and sustained to assure access to critical instrumentation at reasonable cost?
- Can Heat Flow become an ocean variable in the short term? How important is heat flow as one of the ocean variables crucial for understanding and monitoring various aspects of the Earth's climate system, weather patterns, marine ecosystems, and natural resource management?
The working group aims to encourage discussion and strengthen communication in the marine heat flow community sub group. This includes Identifying all actors of the marine heat flow community (scientists, engineers, companies) and motivating an active participation in the IHFC activities (meetings, summer schools, data review).
Recent activities: