Effects of Small-Scale Bathymetric Roughness on the Global Internal Wave Field

• Main Authors: Goff, John A., Arbic, Brian K.
• Other Authors: TEXAS UNIV AT AUSTIN INST FOR GEOPHYSICS
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2008
• Subjects: Physical and Dynamic Oceanography; Fluid Mechanics; *OCEAN WAVES; *ROUGHNESS; *INTERNAL WAVES; BATHYMETRY; MIXING; TIDES; OCEAN BOTTOM; ACOUSTIC DETECTORS; OCEAN TIDES; OCEANOGRAPHIC DATA; TOPOGRAPHY; OCEAN CURRENTS; OCEAN MODELS; BAROCLINES; AAD(AUSTRALIAN ANTARCTIC DISCORDANCE); BRUNT-VAISALA BUOYANCY; HYCOM TIDAL MODEL; GLOBAL TIDAL MODEL; Antarctic; Australian-Antarctic Discordance; Egbert; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA533846; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA533846

The small-scale roughness properties of the seafloor are increasingly being recognized as critical parameters in determining important processes in physical oceanography. For instance, in situ observations (e.g., Polzin et al., 1997) find that mixing levels are greatly elevated in regions of rough topography. Gille et al. (2000) demonstrate that mesoscale eddy energy tends to be lower in areas where the bottom is rough (suggesting the possibility that dissipation of eddy energy takes place in such areas), and Egbert and Ray (2003) show that substantial tidal dissipation occurs in such areas. The dissipation is generally thought to arise from the breaking of internal waves generated by flows over the rough seafloor. The original document contains color images.