On eddy viscosity, energy cascades, and the horizontal resolution of gridded satellite altimeter products

View/ Open
Date
2013-02Author
Arbic, Brian K.
Concept link
Polzin, Kurt L.
Concept link
Scott, Robert B.
Concept link
Richman, James G.
Concept link
Shriver, Jay F.
Concept link
Metadata
Show full item recordCitable URI
https://hdl.handle.net/1912/5850As published
https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-11-0240.1DOI
10.1175/JPO-D-11-0240.1Abstract
Motivated by the recent interest in ocean energetics, the widespread use of horizontal eddy viscosity in models, and the promise of high horizontal resolution data from the planned wide-swath satellite altimeter, this paper explores the impacts of horizontal eddy viscosity and horizontal grid resolution on geostrophic turbulence, with a particular focus on spectral kinetic energy fluxes Π(K) computed in the isotropic wavenumber (K) domain. The paper utilizes idealized two-layer quasigeostrophic (QG) models, realistic high-resolution ocean general circulation models, and present-generation gridded satellite altimeter data. Adding horizontal eddy viscosity to the QG model results in a forward cascade at smaller scales, in apparent agreement with results from present-generation altimetry. Eddy viscosity is taken to roughly represent coupling of mesoscale eddies to internal waves or to submesoscale eddies. Filtering the output of either the QG or realistic models before computing Π(K) also greatly increases the forward cascade. Such filtering mimics the smoothing inherent in the construction of present-generation gridded altimeter data. It is therefore difficult to say whether the forward cascades seen in present-generation altimeter data are due to real physics (represented here by eddy viscosity) or to insufficient horizontal resolution. The inverse cascade at larger scales remains in the models even after filtering, suggesting that its existence in the models and in altimeter data is robust. However, the magnitude of the inverse cascade is affected by filtering, suggesting that the wide-swath altimeter will allow a more accurate determination of the inverse cascade at larger scales as well as providing important constraints on smaller-scale dynamics.
Description
Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 43 (2013): 283–300, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-11-0240.1.
Collections
Suggested Citation
Journal of Physical Oceanography 43 (2013): 283–300Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
SEASTAR: A mission to study ocean submesoscale dynamics and small-scale atmosphere-ocean processes in coastal, shelf and polar seas
Gommenginger, Christine; Chapron, Bertrand; Hogg, Andy; Buckingham, Christian; Fox-Kemper, Baylor; Eriksson, Leif; Soulat, Francois; Ubelmann, Clement; Ocampo-Torres, Francisco; Nardelli, Bruno Buongiorno; Griffin, David; Lopez-Dekker, Paco; Knudsen, Per; Andersen, Ole; Stenseng, Lars; Stapleton, Neil; Perrie, Will; Violante-Carvalho, Nelson; Schulz-Stellenfleth, Johannes; Woolf, David K.; Isern-Fontanet, Jordi; Ardhuin, Fabrice; Klein, Patrice; Mouche, Alexis; Pascual, Ananda; Capet, Xavier; Hauser, Daniele; Stoffelen, Ad; Morrow, Rosemary; Aouf, Lotfi; Breivik, Øyvind; Fu, Lee-Lueng; Johannessen, Johnny A.; Aksenov, Yevgeny; Bricheno, Lucy; Hirschi, Joel; Martin, Adrien C. H.; Martin, Adrian P.; Nurser, A. J. George; Polton, Jeff; Wolf, Judith; Johnsen, Harald; Soloviev, Alexander; Jacobs, Gregg A.; Collard, Fabrice; Groom, Steve; Kudryavtsev, Vladimir; Wilkin, John L.; Navarro, Victor; Babanin, Alexander; Martin, Matthew; Siddorn, John; Saulter, Andrew; Rippeth, Tom; Emery, Bill; Maximenko, Nikolai; Romeiser, Roland; Graber, Hans C.; Alvera Azcarate, Aida; Hughes, Chris W.; Vandemark, Douglas; da Silva, Jose; Van Leeuwen, Peter Jan; Naveira Garabato, Alberto C.; Gemmrich, Johannes; Mahadevan, Amala; Marquez, Jose; Munro, Yvonne; Doody, Sam; Burbidge, Geoff (Frontiers Media, 2019-08-13)High-resolution satellite images of ocean color and sea surface temperature reveal an abundance of ocean fronts, vortices and filaments at scales below 10 km but measurements of ocean surface dynamics at these scales are ... -
Evaluation of GEOSAT data and application to variability of the Northeast Pacific Ocean
Campbell, Jeffrey W. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, 1988-09)A portion of the northeast Pacific ocean was chosen within which to evaluate and use altimetric data from the U.S. Navy Geodetic Satellite GEOSAT. The zero-order accuracy of the major GEOSAT geophysical data record (GDR) ... -
Constraints on the resistivity of the oceanic lithosphere and asthenosphere from seafloor ocean tidal electromagnetic measurements
Zhang, Huiqian; Egbert, Gary D.; Chave, Alan D.; Huang, Qinghua; Kelbert, Anna; Erofeeva, Svetlana Y. (Oxford University Press, 2019-07-11)The electromagnetic (EM) field generated by ocean tidal flow is readily detectable in both satellite magnetic field data, and in ocean-bottom measurements of electric and magnetic fields. The availability of accurate charts ...