On the modifications of near-inertial waves at fronts: implications for energy transfer across scales
On the modifications of near-inertial waves at fronts: implications for energy transfer across scales
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DOI：
10.1007/s10236-017-1088-6
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发表时间：
2017-08
期刊：
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
L. Thomas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
L. Thomas
在海洋中，风产生的动能（KE）主要表现为平衡流和近惯性波。这些流动的动力学受到地球自转的强烈限制，导致平衡电流中的 KE 遵循反向级联，但也阻止了波与波相互作用将近惯性带中的能量流动到较低频率和较高垂直波数。因此，风产生的KE如何转化为小尺度湍流并消散是一个不小的问题。本文回顾了最近的理论计算和数值模拟，展示了海洋前沿存在的横向密度梯度对内波物理学的一些令人惊讶的修改如何允许平衡流和近惯性波之间的强烈相互作用，最终导致两种运动的能量损失。
In the ocean, wind-generated kinetic energy (KE) manifests itself primarily in balanced currents and near-inertial waves. The dynamics of these flows is strongly constrained by the Earth’s rotation, causing the KE in balanced currents to follow an inverse cascade but also preventing wave-wave interactions from fluxing energy in the near-inertial band to lower frequencies and higher vertical wavenumbers. How wind-generated KE is transferred to small-scale turbulence and dissipated is thus a non-trivial problem. This article presents a review of recent theoretical calculations and numerical simulations that demonstrate how some surprising modifications to internal wave physics by the lateral density gradients present at ocean fronts allow for strong interactions between balanced currents and near-inertial waves that ultimately result in energy loss for both types of motion.