David Griffin

Research Scientist (Physical Oceanographer).

Current projects as at February 2010:

BLUElink: [satellites] and [ocean models].
The marine component of the Renewable Energy Atlas of Australia.

Past projects

Pilot investigation of the origins and pathways of marine debris found in the northern Australian marine environment
[Oceanic dispersal of the larvae of Southern Rock Lobster]

Click on the South-East Fishery (SEF) and Western Australian (WA) CDs to browse their contents. Each show ocean surface environmental data (currents, temperatures, winds, etc for several recent years, in the form of movies you can play on your computer. The WA CD also has results from an FRDC-funded study of ocean dispersal of larvae of Western Rock Lobster.

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1995 Mass-mortality of Pilchards

This marine emergency appeared at first to be due to anomalous winds in the Great Australian Bight driving unusually strong upwelling. Upwelling can be seen opposite off Cape Carnot on the Eyre Peninsula (near image centre) and off the Bonney Coast (bottom right). This image is for 2 March 1995, 13 days before dead pilchards were first reported, in the area at top left of the image. However, a search of our archive turned up an image for 18 February 1992 where much stronger upwelling was evident, suggesting that the strong upwelling of 1995 was not the only factor. Contact me for a re-print of Griffin et al. (1997) The 1995 Pilchard Mass Mortality: no role found for physical nor biological oceanographic factors in Australia for further information, or see Jones et al. (1997), Hyatt et al. (1997), Whittington et al. (1997) and Fletcher et al. (1997).

A second mass mortality of pilchard commenced on 7 October 1998, and ran a course similar to the 1995 event.

Data assimilation for shelf circulation

Before coming to CSIRO I worked with Keith Thompson at Dalhousie University Department of Oceanography in Nova Scotia, Canada. We developed a regional circulation model for the Scotian shelf with data assimilation by a variational method. The model is simple and comprises a prognostic shallow-water-equation component and a diagnostic geostrophic component for the barotropic and baroclinic components of the circulation. The adjoint shallow water equations are used to infer the flows through the open boundaries in order to reproduce interior observations. Contact me for a reprint of Griffin and Thompson (1996) The adjoint method of data assimilation used operationally for shelf circulation.

Bibliography

E-mail me for reprints of journal articles and/or possibly of unrefereed literature . Other literature cited here.

Other

Material for seminars given recently