Anatomy of energy pathways in the subtropical gyre of the North Atlantic ...

• Main Author: Tedesco, Pauline
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2023
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10255380; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10255380

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 ...