Spatio–Temporal Coarse–Graining Decomposition of the Global Ocean Geostrophic Kinetic Energy

Buzzicotti, M.; Storer, B. A.; Khatri, H.; Griffies, S. M.; Aluie, H.

doi:10.1029/2023ms003693

Spatio–Temporal Coarse–Graining Decomposition of the Global Ocean Geostrophic Kinetic Energy

Journal Article · Thu Jun 22 00:00:00 EDT 2023 · Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2023ms003693· OSTI ID:1988263

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University of Rome Tor Vergata and INFN (Italy)
University of Rochester, NY (United States)
University of Liverpool (United Kingdom)
NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ (United States); Princeton University Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program, NJ (United States)

We expand on a recent determination of the first global energy spectrum of the ocean’s surface geostrophic circulation using a coarse-graining (CG) method. We compare spectra from CG to those from spherical harmonics by treating land in a manner consistent with the boundary conditions. While the two methods yield qualitatively consistent domain-averaged results, spherical harmonics spectra are too noisy at gyre-scales (> 1000 km). More importantly, spherical harmonics are inherently global and cannot provide local information connecting scales with currents geographically. CG shows that the extra-tropics mesoscales (100–500 km) have a root-mean-square (rms) velocity of ~15 cm/s, which increases to ~30–40 cm/s locally in the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio and to ~16–28 cm/s in the ACC. There is notable hemispheric asymmetry in mesoscale energy-per-area, which is higher in the north due to continental boundaries. We estimate that ≈25–50% of total geostrophic energy is at scales smaller than 100 km, and is un(der)-resolved by pre-SWOT satellite products. Spectra of the time-mean circulation show that most of its energy (up to 70%) resides in stationary eddies with characteristic scales smaller than (< 500 km). This highlights the preponderance of ‘standing’ small-scale structures in the global ocean due to the temporally coherent forcing by boundaries. By coarse-graining in space and time, we compute the first spatio-temporal global spectrum of geostrophic circulation from AVISO and NEMO. These spectra show that every length-scale evolves over a wide range of time-scales with a consistent peak at ≈200 km and ≈2–3 weeks.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Univ. of Rochester, NY (United States). Lab. for Laser Energetics

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Science Foundation (NSF); European Research Council (ERC); UK NERC; NERSC

Grant/Contract Number:: NA0003856; NA0003914; NA0004134; 80NSSC18K0772; OCE-2123496; SC0014318; SC0020229; SC0019329; PHY-2020249; PHY-2206380; 882340; NE/T013494/1; AC02-05CH11231

OSTI ID:: 1988263

Journal Information:: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, Vol. 15, Issue 6; ISSN 1942-2466

Publisher:: American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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