Journal ArticleDOI
From Topographic Internal Gravity Waves to Turbulence
Sutanu Sarkar,Alberto Scotti +1 more
TLDR
In this paper, the authors review progress made in the past decade toward understanding the different processes that can lead to turbulence during the generation, propagation, and reflection of internal waves and how these processes affect mixing.Abstract:
Internal gravity waves are a key process linking the large-scale mechanical forcing of the oceans to small-scale turbulence and mixing. In this review, we focus on internal waves generated by barotropic tidal flow over topography. We review progress made in the past decade toward understanding the different processes that can lead to turbulence during the generation, propagation, and reflection of internal waves and how these processes affect mixing. We consider different modeling strategies and new tools that have been developed. Simulation results, the wealth of observational material collected during large-scale experiments, and new laboratory data reveal how the cascade of energy from tidal flow to turbulence occurs through a host of nonlinear processes, including intensified boundary flows, wave breaking, wave-wave interactions, and the instability of high-mode internal wave beams. The roles of various nondimensional parameters involving the ocean state, roughness geometry, and tidal forcing are desc...read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Instabilities of Internal Gravity Wave Beams
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the reason for the ubiquity of wave beams in stratified fluids, which is related to the fact that they are solutions of the nonlinear governing equations.
On the Effect of Topographically-Enhanced Mixing on the Global Ocean Circulation
TL;DR: The influence of enhanced diapycnal mixing over rough topography on bottom-water circulation is illustrated using results from two global ocean model experiments in this article, where mixing is enhanced above rough bottom topography to represent the dissipation of internal tides.
Journal ArticleDOI
Self-sharpening induces jet-like structure in seafloor gravity currents
Robert M. Dorrell,Jeff Peakall,Stephen E. Darby,Daniel R. Parsons,J. Johnson,Esther J. Sumner,Russell B. Wynn,E. Özsoy,Devrim Tezcan +8 more
TL;DR: The first set of detailed spatial data from a gravity current over a rough seafloor that demonstrate that this existing paradigm is not universal is presented, and that gravity currents are analogous to self-organised atmospheric jets.
Journal ArticleDOI
Philosophy and Application of High-Resolution Temperature Sensors for Stratified Waters.
TL;DR: For studying the effects of short-term temperature variations on life in water, a high-resolution sensor has been designed with low noise level 1000 Bar (>10⁸ N m-2) in the deepest ocean regions, allowing quantitative studies of internal wave turbulent mixing effects.
Journal ArticleDOI
Confronting Grand Challenges in environmental fluid mechanics
Thierry Dauxois,Thomas Peacock,Peter Bauer,Colm-cille Caulfield,Claudia Cenedese,Catherine Gorle,George Haller,Gregory Ivey,Paul Linden,Eckart Meiburg,Nadia Pinardi,Nathalie Vriend,Andrew W. Woods +12 more
TL;DR: The results of a recent Les Houches School of Physics meeting are summarized in this article with the intent of providing a resource for the community going forward and a plan of action for the coming decade.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Abyssal recipes II: energetics of tidal and wind mixing
Walter Munk,Carl Wunsch +1 more
TL;DR: Using the Levitus climatology, the authors showed that 2.1 TW (terawatts) is required to maintain the global abyssal density distribution against 30 Sverdrups of deep water formation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Estimates of the Local Rate of Vertical Diffusion from Dissipation Measurements
TL;DR: In this article, two models for the source of oceanic turbulence are considered; namely, production by the Reynolds stress working against a time variable mean shear, and the gravitational collapse of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities.
Journal ArticleDOI
Vertical mixing, energy, and the general circulation of the oceans
Carl Wunsch,Raffaele Ferrari +1 more
TL;DR: In particular, small-scale mixing processes are necessary to resupply the potential energy removed in the interior by the overturning and eddy-generating process as discussed by the authors, and it is shown that over most of the ocean significant vertical mixing is confined to topographically complex boundary areas implies a potentially radically different interior circulation than is possible with uniform mixing.
Journal ArticleDOI
Spatial variability of turbulent mixing in the Abyssal Ocean
TL;DR: Ocean microstructure data show that turbulent mixing in the deep Brazil Basin of the South Atlantic Ocean is weak at all depths above smooth abyssal plains and the South American Continental Rise, which implies that abyssal circulations have complex spatial structures that are linked to the underlying bathymetry.
Journal ArticleDOI
Internal Tide Generation in the Deep Ocean
Chris Garrett,Eric Kunze +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that most of the energy flux is associated with low modes that propagate away from the generation region, and that intensity beams of internal tidal energy are expected near critical slopes, bottom slopes equal to the ray slope.