Oceanography Seminar - Andrei Natarov

November 10, 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Marine Science Building 100 Add to Calendar

"Internal waves and their role in equatorial dynamics"

Abstract:
Observations in the equatorial Pacific show that levels of turbulence in the upper (<500m depth) ocean are elevated close to the equator. We show that internal gravity waves generated at the ocean surface at various latitudes are a major source of energy for this enhancement. Coupled climate models cannot adequately resolve internal waves, but climate simulations have been shown to be sensitive to the distribution of mixing with depth. Coupled models can be improved by either creating better parameterizations or by increasing model resolution. We show that resolving internal waves in a basin scale model is feasible, and present results from a high-resolution ocean model of the tropical Pacific. The results suggest that we have achieved the resolution necessary to represent the actual dynamics of the internal waves. We also offer a theoretical discussion of the equatorial dynamics observed in our model simulations.


Ticket Information
n/a

Event Sponsor
Dept of Oceanography, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Chris Measures, (808) 956-7633, ocean@soest.hawaii.edu, http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanography/seminar.html

Share by email