We aim to identify and understand the tracer-independent transport information contained in ocean tracer data. With collaborators, I have developed some new, powerful theoretical tools. Applications include:

• Diagnosing transport timescales and water-mass composition in the North Atlantic ocean.
• Estimating the oceanic burden of anthropogenic carbon—the new methods have distinct advantages.
• Diagnosing and understanding the dynamics of sea-surface anomalies in temperature, salinity, height, and colour.
• Interpreting time-lagged correlations from oceanographic timeseries data.

I work on this topic with Miguel Jimenez Urias, Wenrui Jiang, Steve Griffies, and Darryn Waugh. For recent work, see Miguel’s 2023 JFM paper on scalar mixing.