IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/chsofr/v119y2019icp63-72.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mesoscale-submesoscale interactions in the Gulf of Mexico: From oil dispersion to climate

Author

Listed:
  • Bracco, Annalisa
  • Liu, Guangpeng
  • Sun, Daoxun

Abstract

In the ocean, forcing acts at planetary scales and dissipation at the microscales. In between are the mesoscales, in a lot of respects akin to nearly two-dimensional, quasi-geostrophically, balanced turbulence. Eddies and fronts, extending from ten to hundred kilometers, represent their best-known dynamical expression. At the ocean boundary layers, near the surface and at the bottom, smaller ageostrophic, coherent flow structures may appear in the form of vorticity filaments, density fronts or coherent vortices, with typical scales of hundreds of meters to few kilometers and a lifespan of few days. These so-called submesoscale circulations provide a pathway for energy transfer towards smaller scales, contribute to the global overturning budget, and impact substantially lateral and diapycnal mixing. They develop in presence of density gradients in the turbulent boundary layers, and their statistics are not well known in a global sense, but are likely to change in the future due to projected changes in near surface stratification.

Suggested Citation

  • Bracco, Annalisa & Liu, Guangpeng & Sun, Daoxun, 2019. "Mesoscale-submesoscale interactions in the Gulf of Mexico: From oil dispersion to climate," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 63-72.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:chsofr:v:119:y:2019:i:c:p:63-72
    DOI: 10.1016/j.chaos.2018.12.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960077918310415
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.chaos.2018.12.012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jörn Callies & Raffaele Ferrari & Jody M. Klymak & Jonathan Gula, 2015. "Seasonality in submesoscale turbulence," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 6(1), pages 1-8, November.
    2. Jonathan Gula & M. Jeroen Molemaker & James C. McWilliams, 2016. "Topographic generation of submesoscale centrifugal instability and energy dissipation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-7, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aguirre, J. & Almendral, J.A. & Buldú, J.M. & Criado, R. & Gutiérrez, R. & Leyva, I. & Romance, M. & Sendiña-Nadal, I., 2019. "Experimental complexity in physical, social and biological systems," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 200-202.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mathieu Morvan & Xavier Carton, 2020. "Sub-Mesoscale Frontal Instabilities in the Omani Coastal Current," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-15, April.
    2. Georgy E. Manucharyan & Andrew F. Thompson, 2022. "Heavy footprints of upper-ocean eddies on weakened Arctic sea ice in marginal ice zones," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:chsofr:v:119:y:2019:i:c:p:63-72. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thayer, Thomas R. (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/chaos-solitons-and-fractals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.