Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, USA.
Department of Geophysics, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2023 Apr 11;13(1):5915. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32909-6.
Internal waves contain a large amount of energy in the ocean and are an important source of turbulent mixing. Ocean mixing is relevant for climate because it drives vertical transport of water, heat, carbon and other tracers. Understanding the life cycle of internal waves, from generation to dissipation, is therefore important for improving the representation of ocean mixing in climate models. Here, we provide evidence from a regional realistic numerical simulation in the northeastern Pacific that the wind can play an important role in damping internal waves through current feedback. This results in a reduction of 67% of wind power input at near-inertial frequencies in the region of study. Wind-current feedback also provides a net energy sink for internal tides, removing energy at a rate of 0.2 mW/m[Formula: see text] on average, corresponding to 8% of the local internal tide generation at the Mendocino ridge. The temporal variability and modal distribution of this energy sink are also investigated.
内部波在海洋中蕴含大量能量，是湍混合的一个重要来源。海洋混合对于气候很重要，因为它驱动着水、热、碳和其他示踪物的垂直输运。因此，了解内部波从生成到耗散的生命周期，对于改进气候模型中海洋混合的表示至关重要。在这里，我们提供了来自东北太平洋区域现实数值模拟的证据，表明风可以通过流反馈在阻尼内部波方面发挥重要作用。这导致研究区域近惯性频率下风功率输入减少了 67%。风生流反馈也为内潮提供了一个净能量汇，平均以 0.2 毫瓦/米[Formula: see text]的速率去除能量，相当于门多西诺脊处局部内潮生成的 8%。还研究了这个能量汇的时变和模态分布。
