Eddies and small scales
[Arne Biastoch, Stephan Juricke, René Schubert]
Oceanic eddies of length scale from several kilometers to tens of kilometers and lifetimes of weeks to months play a crucial role in the ocean circulation and climate. They strongly interact with the large-scale ocean circulation, the atmosphere and smaller-scale processes, exchanging different forms of energy and material properties. We investigate these process and scale interactions and their importance in order to better understand the underlying physical phenomena. Ultimately, we want to be able to better predict them and develop new methodologies to represent their effects in global climate models. To that end, we make extensive use of ocean simulations, with idealized and fully global as well as coupled climate and uncoupled ocean-only models. The exploration of fine-scale processes is subject of the ERC Synergy Project WHIRLS.
Surface temperature of an idealized, zonally reentrant channel configuration of the FESOM2 ocean model illustrating the onset and development of mesoscale turbulence.
