Dr Carl Spingys

Dr Carl Spingys is a physical oceanographer with a wide range of expertise on the utilisation of observational techniques to make inferences about the processes and structure of the ocean on a range of scales. His particular focus has been on pushing the capability of existing oceanographic equipment to investigate hard to observe processes. During his PhD at the University of Liverpool he developed a methodology to use traditional ocean moorings to make observations of internal tide Stokes' drift, which had previously only been observed utilising targetted Lagrangian floats. Following his PhD he worked for several years as a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton continuing to make novel and creative use of observational tools to provide new insight. This has included: the first observational quantification of the role of eddies in supply nutrients to the North Atlantic subtropical gyre; observing the transformation by highly efficient turbulence of bottom water as it spreads in a boundary current from Antarctica; and the role of shear generated convective mixing in driving upwelling along ocean boundaries. He moved to NOC in 2023 to work on taking distributed optical fibre sensing technology and applying it to oceanographic problems. This has included a key role in the development and set up of the GAUSS lab with the NOC Optical Interrogator Unit and associated processing servers. He has shown the potential of optical fibres to provide data on near field parameters including the ocean flow and turbulent scale processes. Most recently he has developing a subsurface version of the Optical Interrogator that can be deployed on a wider range of platforms, including moorings and autonomous vehicles.

His service to the wider oceanographic community has included lead chairing sessions at leading international oceanographic conferences; reviewing for many of the leading journals in the field; and providing expert reviews for the Australian National Marine Facility. He has also supported many field campaigns (42 weeks at sea), both focussed on physical oceanography and interdisciplinary cruises, including leading the physics team on a cruise and leading watches. Through this he has gain experience with many of the typical tools of oceanographic research including: CTD, LADCP, moorings, vertical microstructure profilers, towed instruments.

Please see my publications at the google scholar link below:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=X_tdJrcAAAAJ