ALBERT

Description: Generation of ocean surface boundary layer turbulence and coherent roll structures is examined in the context of wind-driven and geostrophic shear associated with horizontal density gradients using a large-eddy simulation model. Numerical experiments over a range of surface wind forcing and horizontal density gradient strengths, combined with linear stability analysis, indicate that the dominant instability mechanism supporting coherent roll development in these simulations is a mixed instability combining shear instability of the ageostrophic, wind-driven flow with symmetric instability of the frontal geostrophic shear. Disruption of geostrophic balance by vertical mixing induces an inertially rotating ageostrophic current, not forced directly by the wind, that initially strengthens the stratification, damps the instabilities, and reduces vertical mixing, but instability and mixing return when the inertial buoyancy advection reverses. The resulting rolls and instabilities are not aligned with the frontal zone, with an oblique orientation controlled by the Ekman-like instability. Mean turbulence is enhanced when the winds are destabilizing relative to the frontal orientation, but mean Ekman buoyancy advection is found to be relatively unimportant in these simulations. Instead, the mean turbulent kinetic energy balance is dominated by mechanical shear production that is enhanced when the wind-driven shear augments the geostrophic shear, while the resulting vertical mixing nearly eliminates any effective surface buoyancy flux from near-surface, cold-to-warm, Ekman buoyancy advection.

Description: A simple, isolated front is modeled using a turbulence resolving, large-eddy simulation (LES) to examine the generation of instabilities and inertial oscillations by surface fluxes. Both surface cooling and surface wind stress are considered. Coherent roll instabilities with 200–300-m horizontal scale form rapidly within the front after the onset of surface forcing. With weak surface cooling and no wind, the roll axis aligns with the front, yielding results that are equivalent to previous constant gradient symmetric instability cases. After ~1 day, the symmetric modes transform into baroclinic mixed modes with an off-axis orientation. Traditional baroclinic instability develops by day 2 and thereafter dominates the overall circulation. Addition of destabilizing wind forcing produces a similar behavior, but with off-axis symmetric-Ekman shear modes at the onset of instability. In all cases, imbalance of the geostrophic shear by vertical mixing leads to an inertial oscillation in the frontal currents. Analysis of the energy budget indicates an exchange between kinetic energy linked to the inertial currents and potential energy associated with restratification as the front oscillates in response to the vertically sheared inertial current. Inertial kinetic energy decreases from enhanced mixed layer turbulence dissipation and vertical propagation of inertial wave energy into the pycnocline.

Description: Lateral stirring is a basic oceanographic phenomenon affecting the distribution of physical, chemical, and biological fields. Eddy stirring at scales on the order of 100 km (the mesoscale) is fairly well understood and explicitly represented in modern eddy-resolving numerical models of global ocean circulation. The same cannot be said for smaller-scale stirring processes. Here, the authors describe a major oceanographic field experiment aimed at observing and understanding the processes responsible for stirring at scales of 0.1–10 km. Stirring processes of varying intensity were studied in the Sargasso Sea eddy field approximately 250 km southeast of Cape Hatteras. Lateral variability of water-mass properties, the distribution of microscale turbulence, and the evolution of several patches of inert dye were studied with an array of shipboard, autonomous, and airborne instruments. Observations were made at two sites, characterized by weak and moderate background mesoscale straining, to contrast different regimes of lateral stirring. Analyses to date suggest that, in both cases, the lateral dispersion of natural and deliberately released tracers was O(1) m2 s–1 as found elsewhere, which is faster than might be expected from traditional shear dispersion by persistent mesoscale flow and linear internal waves. These findings point to the possible importance of kilometer-scale stirring by submesoscale eddies and nonlinear internal-wave processes or the need to modify the traditional shear-dispersion paradigm to include higher-order effects. A unique aspect of the Scalable Lateral Mixing and Coherent Turbulence (LatMix) field experiment is the combination of direct measurements of dye dispersion with the concurrent multiscale hydrographic and turbulence observations, enabling evaluation of the underlying mechanisms responsible for the observed dispersion at a new level.

Description: The dynamical response of the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) to mesoscale sea surface temperature (SST) perturbations is investigated over the Agulhas Return Current during winter from a 1-month, high-resolution, three-dimensional simulation using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) mesoscale model. A steady lower boundary condition for July 2002 is obtained using SST measurements from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer on the Earth Observing System (EOS)–Aqua satellite (AMSR-E). The WRF models’ ability to accurately simulate the SST-induced surface wind response is demonstrated from a comparison with satellite surface wind observations from the SeaWinds scatterometer on the Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) satellite. Relevant features of this simulation include a quasi-periodic distribution of mesoscale SST perturbations with spatial scales ∼200 km and strong winds that lead to a large surface sensible heat flux response, whose broad range of 80–100 W m−2 between warm and cool SST perturbations is much larger than seen in most previous simulations of mesoscale wind–SST coupling. This simulation provides the first realistic example of vertical turbulent redistribution of momentum driven by the SST-induced surface heating perturbations acting in concert with the SST-induced pressure gradients to accelerate near-surface flow toward warm water and decelerate near-surface flow toward cool water. This simulation is also the first example of a near-surface wind speed response to mesoscale SST perturbations that differs qualitatively and substantially from the vertically averaged MABL wind response. In the vertically averaged MABL momentum budget, the surface wind stress acts as a drag on the SST-induced perturbation flow as it is being accelerated by SST-induced pressure gradients. However, only in the middle and upper reaches of the MABL does the turbulent stress divergence act as a drag on the SST-induced winds perturbations in this simulation. These mesoscale SST perturbations are also shown to modify the wind direction within the MABL. Dynamically, this is accomplished through SST-induced perturbations to the crosswind components of the pressure gradient, turbulent stress divergence, and the Coriolis force.

Description: The stability of a time-periodic baroclinic wave-mean oscillation in a high-dimensional two-layer quasigeostrophic spectral model is examined by computing a full set of time-dependent normal modes (Floquet vectors) for the oscillation. The model has 72 × 62 horizontal resolution and there are 8928 Floquet vectors in the complete set. The Floquet vectors fall into two classes that have direct physical interpretations: wave-dynamical (WD) modes and damped-advective (DA) modes. The WD modes (which include two neutral modes related to continuous symmetries of the underlying system) have large scales and can efficiently exchange energy and vorticity with the basic flow; thus, the dynamics of the WD modes reflects the dynamics of the wave-mean oscillation. These modes are analogous to the normal modes of steady parallel flow. On the other hand, the DA modes have fine scales and dynamics that reduce, to first order, to damped advection of the potential vorticity by the basic flow. While individual WD modes have immediate physical interpretations as discrete normal modes, the DA modes are best viewed, in sum, as a generalized solution to the damped advection problem. The asymptotic stability of the time-periodic basic flow is determined by a small number of discrete WD modes and, thus, the number of independent initial disturbances, which may destabilize the basic flow, is likewise small. Comparison of the Floquet exponent spectrum of the wave-mean oscillation to the Lyapunov exponent spectrum of a nearby aperiodic trajectory suggests that this result will still be obtained when the restriction to time periodicity is relaxed.

Description: Linear disturbance growth is studied in a quasigeostrophic baroclinic channel model with several thousand degrees of freedom. Disturbances to an unstable, nonlinear wave-mean oscillation are analyzed, allowing the comparison of singular vectors and time-dependent normal modes (Floquet vectors). Singular vectors characterize the transient growth of linear disturbances in a specified inner product over a specified time interval and, as such, they complement and are related to Lyapunov vectors, which characterize the asymptotic growth of linear disturbances. The relationship between singular vectors and Floquet vectors (the analog of Lyapunov vectors for time-periodic systems) is analyzed in the context of a nonlinear baroclinic wave-mean oscillation. It is found that the singular vectors divide into two dynamical classes that are related to those of the Floquet vectors. Singular vectors in the “wave dynamical” class are found to asymptotically approach constant linear combinations of Floquet vectors. The most rapidly decaying singular vectors project strongly onto the most rapidly decaying Floquet vectors. In contrast, the leading singular vectors project strongly onto the leading adjoint Floquet vectors. Examination of trajectories that are near the basic cycle show that the leading Floquet vectors are geometrically tangent to the local attractor while the leading initial singular vectors point off the local attractor. A method for recovering the leading Floquet vectors from a small number of singular vectors is additionally demonstrated.

Description: Satellite observations of wind stress and sea surface temperature (SST) are analyzed to investigate ocean–atmosphere interaction in the California Current System (CCS). As in regions of strong SST fronts elsewhere in the World Ocean, SST in the CCS region is positively correlated with surface wind stress when SST fronts are strong, which occurs during the summertime in the CCS region. This ocean influence on the atmosphere is apparently due to SST modification of stability and mixing in the atmospheric boundary layer and is most clearly manifest in the derivative wind stress fields: wind stress curl and divergence are linearly related to, respectively, the crosswind and downwind components of the local SST gradient. The dynamic range of the Ekman upwelling velocities associated with the summertime SST-induced perturbations of the wind stress curl is larger than that of the upwelling velocities associated with the mean summertime wind stress curl. This suggests significant feedback effects on the ocean, which likely modify the SST distribution that perturbed the wind stress curl field. The atmosphere and ocean off the west coast of North America must therefore be considered a fully coupled system. It is shown that the observed summertime ocean–atmosphere interaction is poorly represented in the NOAA North American Mesoscale Model (formerly called the Eta Model). This is due, at least in part, to the poor resolution and accuracy of the SST boundary condition used in the model. The sparse distribution of meteorological observations available over the CCS for data assimilation may also contribute to the poor model performance.

Description: To understand the characteristics of sea surface height signatures of tropical instability waves (TIWs), a linearized model of the central Pacific Ocean was developed in which the vertical structures of the state variables are projected onto a set of orthogonal baroclinic eigenvectors. In lieu of in situ current measurements with adequate spatial and temporal resolution, the mean current structure used in the model was obtained from the Parallel Ocean Climate Model (POCM). The TIWs in the linear model have cross-equatorial structure and wavenumber–frequency content similar to the TIWs in POCM, even when the vertical structures of the state variables are projected onto only the first two orthogonal baroclinic eigenvectors. Because this model is able to reproduce TIWs with relatively simple vertical structure, it is possible to examine the mechanism for the formation of TIWs. TIWs are shown to form from a resonance between two equatorial Rossby waves as the strength of the background currents is slowly increased.