PO11D:
Oceanic Energy Pathways: From the Global Circulation to the Submesoscale I


Session ID#: 9585

Session Description:
Ocean circulation involves strong nonlinear coupling between processes and structures over a wide range of scales. This session focuses on dynamics related to scale interactions, ranging from global down to the sub-mesoscale. Such interactions play a primary role in determining budgets of momentum, heat, carbon, and other biogeochemical tracers in the ocean, which regulate Earth’s climate.  A promising approach to better understand dynamics at various scales, as well as their interactions, is to consider their energetics. Yet, significant uncertainties remain in our understanding of the oceanic energy pathways, from the global circulation to loss of balance at the sub-mesoscale. Understanding energy transfer across scales is fundamental not only for developing a more complete description of ocean dynamics, but also for the formulation of parameterizations in ocean climate models. In this session we invite discussions of theoretical, observational and modeling studies addressing the above issues pertaining to energy transfer across scales. Specific processes of interest include, but are not limited to, mesoscale and sub-mesoscale instabilities, eddy-mean flow interaction, interactions of the mesoscale with topography, and the transfer of energy between the balanced flow and internal waves.
Primary Chair:  Matthew W Hecht, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States
Chairs:  Hussein Aluie, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States, Juan A Saenz, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States and Malte Jansen, University of Chicago, Geophysical Sciences, Chicago, IL, United States
Moderators:  Hussein Aluie, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, United States and Matthew W Hecht, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, United States
Student Paper Review Liaison:  Malte Jansen, University of Chicago, Geophysical Sciences, Chicago, IL, United States
Index Terms:

4520 Eddies and mesoscale processes [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
4528 Fronts and jets [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
4532 General circulation [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
4568 Turbulence, diffusion, and mixing processes [OCEANOGRAPHY: PHYSICAL]
Co-Sponsor(s):
  • TP - Turbulent Processes

Abstracts Submitted to this Session:

PO11D-01
A simple model of eddy saturation (61705)
David Philip Marshall1, Maarten Ambaum2, David Roy Munday3, Lenka Novak2 and James R Maddison4, (1)University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, (2)Univ Reading, Reading, United Kingdom, (3)British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, United Kingdom, (4)University of Edinburgh, School of Mathematics, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
PO11D-02
The Geometric Decomposition of Eddy Feedbacks: Insights into the Energetics of Scale Interactions (90826)
Stephanie Waterman, University of New South Wales, Climate Change Research Centre & ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Sydney, Australia; University of British Columbia, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Vancouver, BC, Canada, Jonathan M Lilly, NorthWest Research Associates, Redmond, WA, United States and Kial Douglas Stewart, Australian National University, Research School of Earth Science, Canberra, ACT, Australia
PO11D-03
Flavours of Baroclinic Instability in the Global Ocean (88388)
Shane R Keating, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia and K. Shafer Smith, New York University, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York, NY, United States
PO11D-04
Parameterizing subgrid-scale eddy effects using energetically consistent backscatter (90506)
Malte Jansen1, Alistair Adcroft2, Stephen Matthew Griffies3, Robert Hallberg3 and Isaac Held4, (1)University of Chicago, Geophysical Sciences, Chicago, IL, United States, (2)Princeton University, Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton, NJ, United States, (3)Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, United States, (4)Princeton Univ, Princeton, NJ, United States
PO11D-05
Probing the Timescales of Mesoscale Eddy Equilibration (88055)
Anirban Sinha, Columbia University, Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, New York, NY, United States and Ryan P Abernathey, Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, Palisades, NY, United States
PO11D-06
How do Ocean Heat Fluxes Depend on Bottom Pressure Torque? (87656)
Maike Sonnewald, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Cambridge, MA, United States, A. J. George Nurser, National Oceanography Centre Southampton and Joel Hirschi, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, United Kingdom
PO11D-07
Jet-Topography Interactions: What Sets the Vertical Structure of Eddy Effects Around Topography? (90852)
Alice Barthel, University of New South Wales, Climate Change Research Centre & ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Sydney, NSW, Australia, Andrew M. Hogg, Research School of Earth Sciences & ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia and Stephanie Waterman, University of New South Wales, Climate Change Research Centre & ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Sydney, Australia; University of British Columbia, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Vancouver, BC, Canada
PO11D-08
The structure of baroclinic turbulence in an idealized family of baroclinically-unstable flows (93460)
K. Shafer Smith, New York University, New York, NY, United States and Shane R Keating, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
See more of: Physical Oceanography/Ocean Circulation