A regime diagram for ocean geostrophic turbulence

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Andreas Klocker, UTAS
• Thursday 09 October 2014, 16:00-17:00
• British Antarctic Survey, Room 330B.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Dan Jones.

If external to BAS, please email the organiser in advance to gain access to the building

A two-dimensional regime diagram for geostrophic turbulence in the ocean is constructed by plotting observation-based estimates of the nondimensional eddy radius and unsuppressed mixing length against a nonlinearity parameter equal to the ratio of the root-mean square eddy velocity and baroclinic Rossby phase speed. For weak nonlinearity, as found in the tropics, the mixing length mostly corresponds to the marginal stability threshold for baroclinic instability whereas the eddy radius corresponds to the Rhines scale; it is suggested that this mismatch is indicative of the inverse energy cascade that occurs at low latitudes in the ocean and the zonal elongation of eddies. At larger values of nonlinearity, as found at mid- and high-latitudes, the eddy length scales are much shorter than the stability threshold, within a factor of 2.5 of the Rossby deformation radius. However, better agreement is found with a turbulent $\beta$ length scale across much of the ocean.

This talk is part of the British Antarctic Survey - Polar Oceans seminar series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Biology
• British Antarctic Survey
• British Antarctic Survey, Room 330B
• Cambridge Environment
• Climate Science Seminars within Cambridge
• Featured lists
• Life Sciences
• Life Sciences
• ME Seminar
• Queens' College Politics Society
• School of Physical Sciences
• Talks related to atmosphere and ocean dynamics and climate science
• my_list
• ob366-ai4er
• other talks

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.