TY - JOUR
T1 - The latmix summer campaign
T2 - Submesoscale stirring in the upper ocean
AU - Shcherbina, Andrey Y.
AU - Sundermeyer, Miles A.
AU - Kunze, Eric
AU - D'Asaro, Eric
AU - Badin, Gualtiero
AU - Birch, Daniel
AU - Brunner-Suzuki, Anne Marie E G
AU - Callies, Jörn
AU - Kuebel Cervantes, Brandy T.
AU - Claret, Mariona
AU - Concannon, Brian
AU - Early, Jeffrey
AU - Ferrari, Raffaele
AU - Goodman, Louis
AU - Harcourt, Ramsey R.
AU - Klymak, Jody M.
AU - Lee, Craig M.
AU - Lelong, M. Pascale
AU - Levine, Murray D.
AU - Lien, Ren Chieh
AU - Mahadevan, Amala
AU - McWilliams, James C.
AU - Molemaker, M. Jeroen
AU - Mukherjee, Sonaljit
AU - Nash, Jonathan D.
AU - Özgökmen, Tamay
AU - Pierce, Stephen D.
AU - Ramachandran, Sanjiv
AU - Samelson, Roger M.
AU - Sanford, Thomas B.
AU - Shearman, R. Kipp
AU - Skyllingstad, Eric D.
AU - Smith, K. Shafer
AU - Tandon, Amit
AU - Taylor, John R.
AU - Terray, Eugene A.
AU - Thomas, Leif N.
AU - Ledwell, James R.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Meteorological Society.
PY - 2015/8/1
Y1 - 2015/8/1
N2 - Lateral stirring is a basic oceanographic phenomenon affecting the distribution of physical, chemical, and biological fields. Eddy stirring at scales on the order of 100 km (the mesoscale) is fairly well understood and explicitly represented in modern eddy-resolving numerical models of global ocean circulation. The same cannot be said for smaller-scale stirring processes. Here, the authors describe a major oceanographic field experiment aimed at observing and understanding the processes responsible for stirring at scales of 0.1-10 km. Stirring processes of varying intensity were studied in the Sargasso Sea eddy field approximately 250 km southeast of Cape Hatteras. Lateral variability of water-mass properties, the distribution of microscale turbulence, and the evolution of several patches of inert dye were studied with an array of shipboard, autonomous, and airborne instruments. Observations were made at two sites, characterized by weak and moderate background mesoscale straining, to contrast different regimes of lateral stirring. Analyses to date suggest that, in both cases, the lateral dispersion of natural and deliberately released tracers was O(1) m2 s-1 as found elsewhere, which is faster than might be expected from traditional shear dispersion by persistent mesoscale flow and linear internal waves. These findings point to the possible importance of kilometer-scale stirring by submesoscale eddies and nonlinear internal-wave processes or the need to modify the traditional shear-dispersion paradigm to include higher-order effects. A unique aspect of the Scalable Lateral Mixing and Coherent Turbulence (LatMix) field experiment is the combination of direct measurements of dye dispersion with the concurrent multiscale hydrographic and turbulence observations, enabling evaluation of the underlying mechanisms responsible for the observed dispersion at a new level.
AB - Lateral stirring is a basic oceanographic phenomenon affecting the distribution of physical, chemical, and biological fields. Eddy stirring at scales on the order of 100 km (the mesoscale) is fairly well understood and explicitly represented in modern eddy-resolving numerical models of global ocean circulation. The same cannot be said for smaller-scale stirring processes. Here, the authors describe a major oceanographic field experiment aimed at observing and understanding the processes responsible for stirring at scales of 0.1-10 km. Stirring processes of varying intensity were studied in the Sargasso Sea eddy field approximately 250 km southeast of Cape Hatteras. Lateral variability of water-mass properties, the distribution of microscale turbulence, and the evolution of several patches of inert dye were studied with an array of shipboard, autonomous, and airborne instruments. Observations were made at two sites, characterized by weak and moderate background mesoscale straining, to contrast different regimes of lateral stirring. Analyses to date suggest that, in both cases, the lateral dispersion of natural and deliberately released tracers was O(1) m2 s-1 as found elsewhere, which is faster than might be expected from traditional shear dispersion by persistent mesoscale flow and linear internal waves. These findings point to the possible importance of kilometer-scale stirring by submesoscale eddies and nonlinear internal-wave processes or the need to modify the traditional shear-dispersion paradigm to include higher-order effects. A unique aspect of the Scalable Lateral Mixing and Coherent Turbulence (LatMix) field experiment is the combination of direct measurements of dye dispersion with the concurrent multiscale hydrographic and turbulence observations, enabling evaluation of the underlying mechanisms responsible for the observed dispersion at a new level.
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U2 - 10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00015.1
DO - 10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00015.1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84942862612
SN - 0003-0007
VL - 96
SP - 1257
EP - 1279
JO - Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
JF - Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
IS - 8
ER -