Resolving the paradox of oceanic large-scale balance and small-scale mixing

Marino, Raffaele; Pouquet, Annick; Rosenberg, D.

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.114504

Resolving the paradox of oceanic large-scale balance and small-scale mixing

Journal Article · Wed Mar 18 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.114504· OSTI ID:1265351

Marino, Raffaele ^[1]; Pouquet, Annick ^[2]; Rosenberg, D. ^[3]

National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States). Space Sciences Lab.; Institute for Chemical-Physical ProcessesâIPCF/CNR, Rende (Italy)
Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States). Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics; National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO (United States)
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). National Center for Computational Sciences

In this study, a puzzle of oceanic dynamics is the contrast between the observed geostrophic balance, involving gravity, pressure gradient and Coriolis forces, and the necessary turbulent transport: in the former case, energy flows to large scales, leading to spectral condensation, whereas in the latter it is transferred to small scales, where dissipation prevails. The known bi-directional constant-flux energy cascade maintaining both geostrophic balance and mixing tends towards flux equilibration as turbulence strengthens, contradicting models and recent observations which find a dominant large-scale flux. Analyzing a large ensemble of high resolution direct numerical simulations of the Boussinesq equations in the presence of rotation and no salinity, we show that the ratio of the dual energy flux to large and to small scales agrees with observations, and we predict that it scales with the inverse of the Froude and Rossby numbers when stratification is (realistically) stronger than rotation. In addition, we show that the kinetic and potential energies separately undergo a bi-directional transfer to larger and smaller scale. Altogether, this allows for small-scale mixing which drives the global oceanic circulation and will thus potentially lead to more accurate modeling of climate dynamics.

Research Organization:: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF)

Sponsoring Organization:: DOE Office of Science; USDOE

DOE Contract Number:: AC05-00OR22725

OSTI ID:: 1265351

Journal Information:: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 11 Vol. 114; ISSN 0031-9007

Publisher:: American Physical Society (APS)

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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