Graduate studies opportunity

Nothing at the moment...




Some recent research projects

Newfoundland and Labrador ocean climate
(Cyr et al.)


The Newfoundland and Labrador climate index aims to give an overall state of the climate system. It is built of 10 normalized anomaly time series, where positive values representing warm-salty conditions with less sea-ice and conversely negative values representing cold-fresh conditions. This climate index highlights the different regimes prevailing since 1950. For example, the 1960s stands out as the warmest period in the time series while the early 1990s is the coldest. The warming trend fromthe early 1990s that peaked in 2010 was followed by recent cooling that culminated in 2015. In recent years, the time series constituting the NL climate index have been nearly evenly spread between positive and negative anomalies.
Newfoundland and Labrador climate index derived by summing, in a stacked bar plot, the normalized anomalies of various time series presented in this report. The time series (which start in 1950 unless specified) used for the climate index are as follows: winter NAO index, the air temperature at 5 sites (St. John's, Bonavista, Cartwright, Iqluit and Nuuk), the sea ice season duration and total volume on the Labrador and Newfoundland shelves (starts in 1969), the number of icebergs, SSTs of the NW Atlantic (starts in 1982), vertically-averaged temperature and salinity at Station 27, CIL mean temperature and core temperature at Station 27, the summer CIL volume along hydrographic sections Seal Island, Bonavista and Flemish, and the spring and fall bottom temperature in NAFO divisions 3LNOPs and 2J3KLNO, respectively (both start in 1980).




Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program
(NAFC-Oceanography)


An important task of my actual position at Fisheries and Oceans Canada - Newfoundland (DFO-NL) is to study the Northwest Atlantic Ocean and produce scientific advise in partial support to fisheries. The main data provider for this is the Atlantic Zone Monitoring Program (AZMP), a series of lines and oceanographic stations established in 1999 and maintain with as much as three times 3-week long oceanographic surveys per year. Since summer 2017, an oceanographic buoy is also transmitting in real-time at Station 27. Because the region under the radar of our department is one of the key area for the world ocean circulation, I expect very interesting results to come over the next years. I also welcome any collaboration ideas related to the region.
A map of AZMP hydrographic lines under our responsibility at DFO-NL. Principal lines are: Southwest St. Pierre Bank (SWSPB), Southeast St. Pierre Bank (SESPB), Southeast Grand Bank (SEGB), Flemish Cap (FC), Bonavista (BB), White Bay (WB), Seal Island (SI), Makkovik Bank (MB) and Beachey Island (BI). Opportunistic lines are: Station 27 (S27), Smith Sound (SS) and Funk Island (FI).




MiniFluo-UV and SeaExplorer glider
(Cyr, Tedetti, Goutx, et al.)


During the whole year 2016 I was working at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography in Marseille on the EU project NeXOS. My role was to test and validate a new glider-compatible optical sensor (the MiniFluo-UV) for measurements of dissolved organic matter. Two research papers were published in Frontiers in Marine Science : A New Glider-Compatible Optical Sensor for Dissolved Organic Matter Measurements: Test Case from the NW Mediterranean Sea and A Glider-Compatible Optical Sensor for the Detection of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in the Marine Environment.
Poster presented at the European Geoscience Union conference in Vienna (April 2017).




Trapped diurnal tides - Rockall Bank
(Cyr, van Haren, et al.)


The Rockall Bank is located in the Northeast Atlantic Ocean. It is known for hosting topographically-trapped internal waves causing an important diurnal internal swash on the slopes the bank. This internal swash is described in Observations of Small-Scale Secondary Instabilities during the Shoaling of Internal Bores on a Deep-Ocean Slope published in Journal of Physical Oceanography. Up to a certain extent, these intense hydrodynamics conditions control the distribution of cold-water corals (CWC) in the area. A paper On the influence of cold-water coral mound size on flow hydrodynamics, and vice versa is published in Geophysical Research Letters.
Arrival of a deep bore shoaling on the slopes of Rockall bank (sequence from a moored thermistor chain, 12-h period).




Turbulent mixing in the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary
(Cyr, Bourgault & Galbraith)


My PhD thesis was entitled Turbulent mixing in the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary. As part of this work, I first quantified the mixing ocurring in the interior vs boundary of the basin. Then I was interested in the mechanisms driving the mixing, especially the mixing near the sloping boundary. Overall, this work led to the first quantification of the mixing in the St. Lawrence. This work also led to a better understanding of the effect of mixing on turbulent diapycnal fluxes of nitrates and oxygen and on their effect on the ecosytem.
Turbulent mixing and turbulent vertical nitrate fluxes at a sill. The shear (S2, top) from an ADCP and the dissipation rates of TKE (middle) are presented. Enlargement of the middle plot where nitrate fluxes are presented in the bottom panel over the ADCP echogram. Note that for a better visualization, the bottom plot is scaled differently from other plots and only one cast out of two is presented.