Estimating scale dependent energy fluxes in the meso-to submesoscale-regime in the North Atlantic Ocean using spectral and structure function methods ...

• Main Authors: Leimann, Ilmar, Grisel, Alexa, Walter, Maren, Dräger-Dietel, Julia, Epke, Moritz
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences 2023
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.57757/iugg23-2637; https://gfzpublic.gfz-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_5019237

<!--!introduction!--> The energy cycle in ocean models is still biased due to the large uncertainty regarding how processes in the mesoscale and submesoscale regimes are represented. Since mesoscale turbulence is largely geostrophic, it features an energy transfer towards larger scales. In contrast, submesoscale turbulence can contain both geostrophic and ageostrophic dynamics which makes the direction of the energy flux less clear. Determining the kinetic energy spectrum of meso- to submesoscale turbulence in the ocean is challenging, since it depends on the horizontal resolution of data sets. Gridded satellite data give a good global overview, but are currently barely Rossby radius resolving. We here estimate the kinetic energy spectral fluxes from SSH data which give the geostrophic part, and compare them to spectral fluxes from a submesoscale permitting ocean model with a high-resolution (500m) focus region in the North Atlantic. The kinetic energy spectral fluxes are found to exhibit both inverse ... : The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023) ...