Nonlinear Dynamics Seminar

Robert Pinkel, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego

"Internal Waves, Ocean Mixing, and the Circulation of the Ocean"

1:00pm, RLM 11.204

Abstract: The surface waters of the ocean have a net flow from low to high latitudes with an associated poleward heat flux that is central in establishing the earth’s climate. Some high latitude waters are cooled sufficiently that they sink deep into the sea. This has been known for more than a century, but how the deep waters eventually return to the surface remains unclear. A key player is a type of wave that is a deep sea analog of the familiar surface waves: internal gravity waves, which carry energy and momentum, and can break, leading to deep‐ocean turbulence. The search for deep‐ocean turbulence and an understanding of it is a current major research focus. Sites have been found where internal waves of tidal frequency break and form undersea turbulent breakers 100 m high. Yet there remains a physical disconnect between the understanding of processes that cause dense waters to sink at high latitudes and the processes that mix heat downward at low latitudes, and this is an exciting frontier of current research.