Antonio Martínez Marrero

I have been a Senior Lecturer at the Physics Department of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC) since 1998. I have also been a researcher at the University Institute of Oceanography and Global Change (IOCAG) and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Marine Sciences since 2009. My academic background includes a degree in Marine Sciences (Licensed), obtained in 1987, and a Ph.D. in Physics, obtained in 1995, focused on the study of tidal currents and sea level around the island of Gran Canaria.

The location of the Canary Islands archipelago gave me the opportunity to investigate the Canary Current and its relationship with the upwelling system off northwest Africa. This was made possible by participating in European projects such as CANIGO and national projects such as COCA, CORICA and ORCA. My main contributions to these open ocean studies have been the analysis of different acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs), hydrographic data, and time series data collected with moorings and Lagrangian buoys.

Later, my focus shifted to the study of the formation, evolution, and characterization of eddies in the Canary Current area, especially in the Canary Eddy Corridor as part of the RODA, PUMP, and eIMPACT projects. In addition, I have studied the mesoscale structures of the Cape Verde Frontal Zone and the water intrusions generated in this type of thermohaline fronts. These studies have been carried out as part of several national projects, including CORICA and FLUXES projects. I was also principal investigator of a FLUXES subproject.

In the last 10 years I have paid special attention to the study of internal waves in the Canary Islands area, mainly internal tidal waves and near-inertial waves. The analysis of data obtained in projects such as PUMP and eIMPACT has allowed me to deepen in the interaction between near-inertial waves and eddies, as well as in the trapping of these waves at the base of anticyclonic eddies and their impact on the deep diapycnal mixing.

I am the author of more than 70 scientific publications. Among them, 30 are articles published in scientific journals indexed in the 'Geosciences' and 'Oceanography' sections of the Journal Citation Report. In the last decade, I have participated in nine research projects funded by national and European agencies.

• Ocean Waves: Internal waves. Near-inertial and tidal waves. Interaction between near-inertial waves and mesoscale structures. Currents on island shelves.
• Data Analysis: time series of current profiles and sea levels. Vessel mounted ADCP data.

An increasing number of studies point to internal waves as the main candidates for the deep small-scale mixing necessary to increase interior ocean water mass potential energy and thus to maintain the meridional overturning circulation [eg. Munk and Wunsch, 1998, Alford, 2003; Wunsch and Ferrari, 2004; Whalen et al., 2012, Waterhouse et al, 2014].

The main sources of internal waves are internal tides produced by rough topography, and near-inertial waves (NIWs) that are typically excited within the sea surface mixed layer by variable wind-stress forcing [Pollard and Millard, 1970; D’Asaro et al. 1995].

As NIWs are ubiquitous features of the world ocean they may play a dominant role in deep small-scale mixing [Alford et al., 2016]. In this regard a key issue is how effective the mechanisms are by which mixed layer excited NIWs propagate downward and dissipate their energy, and thus induce small-scale deep mixing.

The β-dispersion effect that produces both downward and equatorward propagation has been proposed as a first candidate [e.g., Anderson and Gill 1979, Garrett 2001]. Alternatively, the interaction between mesoscale anticyclonic eddies and NIWs [Kunze, 1985] may trap surface-excited NIWs and then induce their downward propagation towards the base of the region of anticyclonic vorticity.