Raden Susanto
University of Maryland, MD·Earth & Environmental Science
Between Asia and Australia, warm water from the Pacific squeezes through narrow passages among the Indonesian islands into the Indian Ocean. This Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) is the only low-latitude link between the two oceans.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Physics
- Topics
physical oceanography
Indonesian Throughflow
ocean circulation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2027
What they work on
- Measure full-depth variability of Indonesian Throughflow transport, and its heat and freshwater fluxes, in the Makassar, Lombok and Alas Straits on tidal, intraseasonal and seasonal timescales using TRIUMPH mooring data.
- Characterize how tidal mixing varies in the Indonesian seas and how it relates to upwelling south of Java, using records from seven moorings deployed since 2019.
- Track how Kelvin waves, large waves guided along coasts and the equator, travel from the tropical Indian Ocean into the Makassar Strait, using mooring observations.
More about the research
It plays a key role in global ocean circulation and climate. The ITF has been measured for three decades, but its variability through the full water depth has never been recorded in detail. Its effects on mixing and on upwelling, where deep water rises to the surface, in the eastern tropical Indian Ocean have also not been studied.
Why it matters
The Indonesian Throughflow controls how much heat and fresh water the Pacific passes to the Indian Ocean, which affects global ocean circulation and climate. Full-depth measurements of its flow, mixing and upwelling fill a long-standing data gap. They could improve understanding of air–sea interactions and how water masses change in this ocean chokepoint.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
John Wilkin
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure water mass and transport variability at the same time in the inflow and outflow straits of the Indonesian Throughflow, using a 3-year mooring array run jointly with China and Indonesia.
Weiqing Han
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
Characterize the spatial and temporal structure of a proposed new pathway carrying Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) waters across the South Indian Ocean, using mooring, drifter, satellite and reanalysis data.
Jean Lynch-Stieglitz
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Earth & Environmental Science
Test how changes in tropical winds alter thermocline depth across the Indo-Pacific by running sensitivity experiments in a high-resolution ocean model.
The school
University of Maryland: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 602 research doctorates a year.
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