Join the Department of Estuarine and Ocean Sciences this Wednesday, October 8th, for a presentation on “Arctic ocean velocities and their partitioning“, by Sylvia Cole, Associate Scientist at WHOI. This seminar will take place in SMAST East 101-103 from 12:30-1:30, or can be accessed via Zoom (Meeting Passcode 428029) . The abstract can be found below.
Abstract:
Kinetic energy is an important metric of ocean circulation that encompasses mean currents, mesoscale and submesoscale stirring velocities, and smaller-scale processes such as internal wave motions. Kinetic energy in the Western Arctic Ocean is investigated for sea ice and in the upper 250 m using more than 12,000 velocity profiles obtained from Ice-Tethered Profiler with Velocity platforms that transit spatially through the ocean. In the vertical, kinetic energy is characterized by four distinct vertical structures associated with near-inertial motions, 7-30 km scales that are within a factor of 2 of the Rossby Radius, mesoscale motions at 30-480 km scales, and mean velocities at scales larger than 480 km. Kinetic energy for the near-inertial component and at scales less than 30 km combined contained 20-40% of total kinetic energy, with the largest fraction within the surface layer. Variability with ice concentration is observed for all scales less than 480 km. This scale aware view of kinetic energy can be directly compared to numerical models at a range of horizontal resolutions, and has implications for circulation beneath an evolving sea ice cover.
