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    Stratified turbulence and mixing efficiency in a salt wedge estuary

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    jpo-d-15-0193%2E1.pdf (2.117Mb)
    Date
    2016-05-24
    Author
    Holleman, Rusty C.  Concept link
    Geyer, W. Rockwell  Concept link
    Ralston, David K.  Concept link
    Metadata
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    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/8060
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-15-0193.1
    DOI
    10.1175/JPO-D-15-0193.1
    Keyword
     Circulation/ Dynamics; Mixing; Shear structure/flows; Turbulence; Observational techniques and algorithms; Ship observations 
    Abstract
    High-resolution observations of velocity, salinity, and turbulence quantities were collected in a salt wedge estuary to quantify the efficiency of stratified mixing in a high-energy environment. During the ebb tide, a midwater column layer of strong shear and stratification developed, exhibiting near-critical gradient Richardson numbers and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) dissipation rates greater than 10−4 m2 s−3, based on inertial subrange spectra. Collocated estimates of scalar variance dissipation from microconductivity sensors were used to estimate buoyancy flux and the flux Richardson number Rif. The majority of the samples were outside the boundary layer, based on the ratio of Ozmidov and boundary length scales, and had a mean Rif = 0.23 ± 0.01 (dissipation flux coefficient Γ = 0.30 ± 0.02) and a median gradient Richardson number Rig = 0.25. The boundary-influenced subset of the data had decreased efficiency, with Rif = 0.17 ± 0.02 (Γ = 0.20 ± 0.03) and median Rig = 0.16. The relationship between Rif and Rig was consistent with a turbulent Prandtl number of 1. Acoustic backscatter imagery revealed coherent braids in the mixing layer during the early ebb and a transition to more homogeneous turbulence in the midebb. A temporal trend in efficiency was also visible, with higher efficiency in the early ebb and lower efficiency in the late ebb when the bottom boundary layer had greater influence on the flow. These findings show that mixing efficiency of turbulence in a continuously forced, energetic, free shear layer can be significantly greater than the broadly cited upper bound from Osborn of 0.15–0.17.
    Description
    Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2016. 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 46 (2016): 1769-1783, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-15-0193.1.
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    • Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering (AOP&E)
    Suggested Citation
    Journal of Physical Oceanography 46 (2016): 1769-1783
     

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