Note on the Rate of Restratification in the Baroclinic Spindown of Fronts
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jpo-d-17-0175.1.pdf
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Author(s)
Callies, Jörn
Ferrari, Raffaele
Date Issued
July 2018
Journal
Journal of Physical Oceanography
Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Citation
Callies, Jörn and Raffaele Ferrari. “Note on the Rate of Restratification in the Baroclinic Spindown of Fronts.” Journal of Physical Oceanography 48, 7 (July 2018): 1543–1553 © 2018 American Meteorological Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This paper revisits how the restratifying buoyancy flux w'b'generated by baroclinic mixed layer instabilities depends on environmental conditions. The frontal spindown is shown to produce buoyancy fluxes that increase significantly beyond the previously proposed and widely used scaling w'b'~fΛ2H2 (f is the Coriolis parameter, Λ is the geostrophic shear, and H is the mixed layer depth), irrespective of whether the initial front is broad or narrow. This increase occurs after the initial phase of the nonlinear evolution, when the baroclinic eddies grow in size and develop velocities significantly in excess of the scaling assumption V ~ ΛH. Implications for parameterizing the restratification caused by baroclinic mixed layer instabilities in coarse-resolution models are discussed. Keywords: Instability; Ocean dynamics; Oceanic mixed layer; Parameterization
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-17-0175.1
