Collaborative Research: Topography, Boundary Currents and the Submesoscale

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This project addresses the dissipation of mesoscale, balanced flow in the ocean through the use of high resolution nesting experiments in two different numerical models (ROMS and the MIT general circulation model). The work specifically addresses the generation of sumesoscale, ageostrophic flows by mesoscale interactions with topography by explicitly resolving the relevant scales of 0.1-10 km in the horizontal. Numerical simulations will be designed to calculate the cascades of energy, enstrophy, and tracer variance and compare with theories, which will also be developed and improved within the scope of the project. The high resolution simulations will be performed in the Kuroshio region where strong topographic features and the the western boundary current dynamics will allow robust testing of the hypotheses. It is hoped that the work will lead to new understandings of the submesoscale regime, the dynamics that connect balance and unbalanced flows, and perhaps even lead to new parameterizations which can be used to represent these processes in ocean and climate models.