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  • 1
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 118 (2013): 2774–2792, doi:10.1002/jgrc.20217.
    Description: The spatial distribution of turbulent dissipation rates and internal wavefield characteristics is analyzed across two contrasting regimes of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), using microstructure and finestructure data collected as part of the Diapycnal and Isopycnal Mixing Experiment in the Southern Ocean (DIMES). Mid-depth turbulent dissipation rates are found to increase from inline image in the Southeast Pacific to inline image in the Scotia Sea, typically reaching inline image within a kilometer of the seabed. Enhanced levels of turbulent mixing are associated with strong near-bottom flows, rough topography, and regions where the internal wavefield is found to have enhanced energy, a less-inertial frequency content and a dominance of upward propagating energy. These results strongly suggest that bottom-generated internal waves play a major role in determining the spatial distribution of turbulent dissipation in the ACC. The energy flux associated with the bottom internal wave generation process is calculated using wave radiation theory, and found to vary between 0.8 mW m−2 in the Southeast Pacific and 14 mW m−2 in the Scotia Sea. Typically, 10%–30% of this energy is found to dissipate within 1 km of the seabed. Comparison between turbulent dissipation rates inferred from finestructure parameterizations and microstructure-derived estimates suggests a significant departure from wave-wave interaction physics in the near-field of wave generation sites.
    Description: The DIMES experiment is supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) of the U.K. and U.S. National Science Foundation. K.L.S. and J.A.B. are supported by NERC.
    Description: 2013-12-04
    Keywords: Turbulent dissipation ; Internal wave ; Antarctic Circumpolar Current ; Mixing
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 2
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 119 (2014): 8627–8645, doi:10.1002/2014JC010099.
    Description: One of the most remarkable features of contemporary oceanic climate change is the warming and contraction of Antarctic Bottom Water over much of global ocean abyss. These signatures represent changes in ventilation mediated by mixing and entrainment processes that may be location-specific. Here we use available data to document, as best possible, those mixing processes as Weddell Sea Deep and Bottom Waters flow along the South Orkney Plateau, exit the Weddell Sea via Orkney Passage and fill the abyssal Scotia Sea. First, we find that an abrupt transition in topography upstream of Orkney Passage delimits the extent of the coldest waters along the Plateau's flanks and may indicate a region of especially intense mixing. Second, we revisit a control volume budget by Heywood et al. (2002) for waters trapped within the Scotia Sea after entering through Orkney Passage. This budget requires extremely vigorous water mass transformations with a diapycnal transfer coefficient of inline image m2 s−1. Evidence for such intense diapycnal mixing is not found in the abyssal Scotia Sea interior and, while we do find large rates of diapycnal mixing in conjunction with a downwelling Ekman layer on the western side of Orkney Passage, it is insufficient to close the budget. This leads us to hypothesize that the Heywood budget is closed by a boundary mixing process in which the Ekman layer associated with the Weddell Sea Deep Water boundary current experiences relatively large vertical scale overturning associated with tidal forcing along the southern boundary of the Scotia Sea.
    Description: KLP gratefully acknowledges salary support from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution bridge support funds. ACNG acknowledges the support of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. LJ and MPM were supported by the ANDREX project, funded by the U.K. National Environment Research Council (NE/E01366X/1).
    Description: 2015-06-16
    Keywords: Mixing ; Transport ; Control volume
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 3
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 116 (2011): C09019, doi:10.1029/2010JC006818.
    Description: There is an ongoing debate concerning the distribution of eddy stirring across the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and the nature of its controlling processes. The problem is addressed here by estimating the isentropic eddy diffusivity κ from a collection of hydrographic and altimetric observations, analyzed in a mixing length theoretical framework. It is shown that, typically, κ is suppressed by an order of magnitude in the upper kilometer of the ACC frontal jets relative to their surroundings, primarily as a result of a local reduction of the mixing length. This observation is reproduced by a quasi-geostrophic theory of eddy stirring across a broad barotropic jet based on the scaling law derived by Ferrari and Nikurashin (2010). The theory interprets the observed widespread suppression of the mixing length and κ in the upper layers of frontal jets as the kinematic consequence of eddy propagation relative to the mean flow within jet cores. Deviations from the prevalent regime of mixing suppression in the core of upper-ocean jets are encountered in a few special sites. Such ‘leaky jet’ segments appear to be associated with sharp stationary meanders of the mean flow that are generated by the interaction of the ACC with major topographic features. It is contended that the characteristic thermohaline structure of the Southern Ocean, consisting of multiple upper-ocean thermohaline fronts separated and underlaid by regions of homogenized properties, is largely a result of the widespread suppression of eddy stirring by parallel jets.
    Description: This study was conducted during A.C.N. G.’s stay at MIT, which was supported jointly by MIT and the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) through a NERC Advanced Research Fellowship (NE/C517633/1). R.F. acknowledges the support of NSFaward OCE‐0825376. K.P.’s participation in this work was supported by WHOI bridge support funds.
    Keywords: Antarctic Circumpolar Current ; Eddy stirring ; Mixing
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 4
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 42 (2015): 3450–3457, doi:10.1002/2015GL063216.
    Description: The impact of a mesoscale eddy on the magnitude and spatial distribution of diapycnal ocean mixing is investigated using a set of hydrographic and microstructure measurements collected in the Southern Ocean. These data sampled a baroclinic, middepth eddy formed during the disintegration of a deep boundary current. Turbulent dissipation is suppressed within the eddy but is elevated by up to an order of magnitude along the upper and lower eddy boundaries. A ray tracing approximation is employed as a heuristic device to elucidate how the internal wave field evolves in the ambient velocity and stratification conditions accompanying the eddy. These calculations are consistent with the observations, suggesting reflection of internal wave energy from the eddy center and enhanced breaking through critical layer processes along the eddy boundaries. These results have important implications for understanding where and how internal wave energy is dissipated in the presence of energetic deep geostrophic flows.
    Description: Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Grant Numbers: NE/E007058/1, NE/E005667/1; U.S. National Science Foundation. Grant Numbers: OCE-1231803, OCE-0927583, OCE-1030309; NERC
    Description: 2015-11-07
    Keywords: Mixing ; Eddy ; Turbulent dissipation ; Internal waves ; Southern Ocean ; Ray tracing
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
    Format: application/pdf
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  • 5
    Publication Date: 2022-05-25
    Description: Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 120 (2015): 7997–8019, doi:10.1002/2015JC010892.
    Description: This paper examines two internal lee wave closures that have been used together with ocean models to predict the time-averaged global energy conversion rate into lee waves and dissipation rate associated with lee waves and topographic blocking: the Garner (2005) scheme and the Bell (1975) theory. The closure predictions in two Southern Ocean regions where geostrophic flows dominate over tides are examined and compared to microstructure profiler observations of the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate, where the latter are assumed to reflect the dissipation associated with topographic blocking and generated lee wave energy. It is shown that when applied to these Southern Ocean regions, the two closures differ most in their treatment of topographic blocking. For several reasons, pointwise validation of the closures is not possible using existing observations, but horizontally averaged comparisons between closure predictions and observations are made. When anisotropy of the underlying topography is accounted for, the two horizontally averaged closure predictions near the seafloor are approximately equal. The dissipation associated with topographic blocking is predicted by the Garner (2005) scheme to account for the majority of the depth-integrated dissipation over the bottom 1000 m of the water column, where the horizontally averaged predictions lie well within the spatial variability of the horizontally averaged observations. Simplifications made by the Garner (2005) scheme that are inappropriate for the oceanic context, together with imperfect observational information, can partially account for the prediction-observation disagreement, particularly in the upper water column.
    Description: National Science Foundation Grant Number: OCE-0960820; Office of Naval Research (ONR) Grant Number: N00014-11-1-0487; Australian Research Council Grant Number: (DE120102927 and CE110001028); National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada Grant Number: (22R23085)
    Description: 2016-06-17
    Keywords: Mixing ; Dissipation ; Finestructure ; Internal waves ; Topographic interactions ; Microstructure
    Repository Name: Woods Hole Open Access Server
    Type: Article
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