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[1] Analysis of drifter trajectories in the Gulf of Mexico has revealed the existence of a region on the southern portion of the West Florida Shelf (WFS) that is not visited by drifters that are released outside of the region. This socalled ''forbidden zone'' (FZ) suggests the existence of a persistent cross-shelf transport barrier on the southern portion of the WFS. In this letter a year-long record of surface currents produced by a Hybrid-Coordinate Ocean Model simulation of the WFS is used to compute Lagrangian coherent structures (LCSs), which reveal the presence of a persistent cross-shelf transport barrier in approximately the same location as the boundary of the FZ. The location of the cross-shelf transport barrier undergoes a seasonal oscillation, being closer to the coast in the summer than in the winter. A month-long record of surface currents inferred from high-frequency (HF) radar measurements in a roughly 60 km  80 km region on the WFS off Tampa Bay is also used to compute LCSs, and these also reveal the presence of transient transport barriers. While the HF-radarderived transport barriers cannot be unambiguously linked to the boundary of the FZ, this analysis does demonstrate the feasibility of monitoring transport barriers on the WFS using a HF-radar-based measurement system. The implications of a persistent cross-shelf transport barrier on the WFS for the development of harmful algal blooms on the shoreward side of the barrier are considered.

An efficient method is presented to numerically simulate stochastic internal-wave-induced sound-speed perturbation fields in deep ocean environments. The sound-speed perturbation field is represented as an internal-wave eigenfunction expansion in which WKB amplitude scaling and stretching of the depth coordinate are exploited. Individual realizations of the sound-speed perturbation field are constructed by evaluating a multidimensional fast Fourier transform of a complex-valued function whose modulus has a known simple form and whose phase is random. Approximations made are shown to be consistent with approximations built into the Garrett–Munk internal-wave spectrum, which is the starting point of this analysis. Both time-varying internal-wave fields in three space dimensions and frozen fields in a vertical plane are considered.

Abstract. It is argued that the complexity of fluid particle trajectories provides the basis for a new method, referred to as the Complexity Method (CM), for estimation of Lagrangian coherent structures in aperiodic flows that are measured over finite time intervals. The basic principles of the CM are explained and the CM is tested in a variety of examples, both idealized and realistic, and in different reference frames. Two measures of complexity are explored in detail: the correlation dimension of trajectory, and a new measure -the ergodicity defect. Both measures yield structures that strongly resemble Lagrangian coherent structures in all of the examples considered. Since the CM uses properties of individual trajectories, and not separation rates between closely spaced trajectories, it may have advantages for the analysis of ocean float and drifter data sets in which trajectories are typically widely and non-uniformly spaced.

A ray-based wave-field description is employed in the interpretation of broadband basin-scale acoustic propagation measurements obtained during the Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate program's 1994 Acoustic Engineering Test. Acoustic observables of interest are wavefront time spread, probability density function (PDF) of intensity, vertical extension of acoustic energy in the reception finale, and the transition region between temporally resolved and unresolved wavefronts. Ray-based numerical simulation results that include both mesoscale and internal-wave-induced sound-speed perturbations are shown to be consistent with measurements of all the aforementioned observables, even though the underlying ray trajectories are predominantly chaotic, that is, exponentially sensitive to initial and environmental conditions. Much of the analysis exploits results that relate to the subject of ray chaos; these results follow from the Hamiltonian structure of the ray equations. Further, it is shown that the collection of the many eigenrays that form one of the resolved arrivals is nonlocal, both spatially and as a function of launch angle, which places severe restrictions on theories that are based on a perturbation expansion about a background ray.

The term "Lagrangian coherent structure" (LCS) is normally used to describe numerically detected structures whose properties are similar to those of stable and unstable manifolds of hyperbolic trajectories. The latter structures are invariant curves, i.e., material curves of fluid that serve as transport barriers. In this paper we use the term LCS to describe a different type of structure whose properties are similar to those of invariant tori in certain classes of two-dimensional incompressible flows. Like stable and unstable manifolds, invariant tori are invariant curves that serve as transport barriers. There are many differences, however, between traditional LCSs and invariant-tori-like LCSs. These differences are discussed with an emphasis on numerical techniques that can be used to identify invariant-tori-like LCSs. Structures of this type are often present in geophysical flows where zonal jets are present. A prime example of an invariant-torus-like LCS is the transport barrier near the core of the polar night jet in the Earth's lower and middle stratospheres in the austral winter and early spring; this is the barrier that traps ozone-depleted air inside the ozone hole. This example is investigated using both a simple analytically prescribed flow and a velocity field produced by a general circulation model of the Earth's atmosphere.

The 2014–2016 JET results are reviewed in the light of their significance for optimising the ITER research plan for the active and non-active operation. More than 60 h of plasma operation with ITER first wall materials successfully took place since its installation in 2011. New multi-machine scaling of the type I-ELM divertor energy flux density to ITER is supported by first principle modelling. ITER relevant disruption experiments and first principle modelling are reported with a set of three disruption mitigation valves mimicking the ITER setup. Insights of the L–H power threshold in Deuterium and Hydrogen are given, stressing the importance of the magnetic configurations and the recent measurements of fine-scale structures in the edge radial electric. Dimensionless scans of the core and pedestal confinement provide new information to elucidate the importance of the first wall material on the fusion performance. H-mode plasmas at ITER triangularity (H  =  1 at βN ~ 1.8 and n/nGW ~ 0.6) have been sustained at 2 MA during 5 s. The ITER neutronics codes have been validated on high performance experiments. Prospects for the coming D–T campaign and 14 MeV neutron calibration strategy are reviewed.