Anatomy of energy pathways in the subtropical gyre of the North Atlantic ...
The North Atlantic is a key region in the global ocean circulation and plays a central role in regulating our climate. Its circulation is constrained by energy transfers between time-mean currents at the basin-scale and time-varying ("eddy") flows from hundreds to order one kilometer, incl...
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Zenodo
2023
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| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10255379 https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10255379 |
| Summary: | The North Atlantic is a key region in the global ocean circulation and plays a central role in regulating our climate. Its circulation is constrained by energy transfers between time-mean currents at the basin-scale and time-varying ("eddy") flows from hundreds to order one kilometer, including low-frequency mesoscale and submesoscale currents and high-frequency internal waves. Here, we evaluate the eddy kinetic energy budget in the subtropical gyre of the North Atlantic (STG), with a focus on the contribution of the different flows. Sources and sinks of energy, non-local effects — spatial energy redistribution — and eddy-mean energy conversions are evaluated using two state-of-the-art numerical simulations, one without and with a tidal forcing. We show that the energy budget varies within the STG, from the leading-order energy balances to the contributions of time-varying flows. In the STG's Interior, where submesoscale currents and internal waves dominate the eddy reservoir, the main energy sources ... |
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