Internal tide breaking processes at the Tasman Continental Slope

The Tasman Tidal Dissipation Experiment (TTIDE) sought to measure and understand the reflection and dissipation of internal tides at the Tasman continental slope, which is irradiated by a strong collimated beam generated at the McQuarie Ridge south of New Zealand. Because the strongest part of the beam impacts the most reflective part of the slope, the dissipative processes and reflective fraction differ from the northern flank of the beam which impacts a more critical slope. At northern sites, dissipation occurs primarily via lee wave breaking over a deep 3D bump and atop a nearly critical portion of the slope near 1500 m depth. At the southern slope, dissipation is due to along-ridge flow over corrugations superimposed on the supercritical slope. In this talk we describe towed and moored observations of these two types of dissipation physics.