February 12, 2024: Ocean Circulation and Climate Dynamics Colloquium

When?  Monday, February 12, 2024 at 11 am
Where?    Lecture Hall, Building 8A, Wischhofstr. 1-3 and online via Zoom: https://geomar-de.zoom.us/j/84289388604?pwd=dGlpeTBUd1Nxem5Ec3dRYXh4NFpOUT09

Abstract:
 

The oceanic energy cascade and the associated redistribution of energy from planetary scales to microscales are crucial to achieve climate equilibrium, yet they remain to be fully understood and quantified. Among the submesoscale flow regime which is characterized by equal contributions from rotational (balanced) and non-rotational (unbalanced) effects, it is internal tides (internal gravity waves at tidal frequency) which have been shown to represent a major energy transfer toward dissipative scales. The Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite mission will push forward global sea surface height (SSH) observations of fine-scale physics of combined balanced and unbalanced motions, and their interactions. Our understanding of these processes will ultimately depend on our ability to disentangle these two different dynamical fow regimes. This thesis aims to tackle SWOT SSH observability of balanced and unbalanced motions around New Caledonia, an area with pronounced internal tide activity alongside elevated level of mesoscale to submesocale eddy variability located beneath two swaths of SWOT’s fast-sampling phase, during which SWOT orbited on a 1-day repeat cycle to collect high-frequency measurements. As an initial step, this thesis provides the first comprehensive description of internal-tide dynamics around New Caledonia, an internal generation hot spot in the southwestern tropical Pacific that has not yet been explored in the literature, based on a tailored regional high-resolution (1/60°) numerical modeling effort. Internal tide generation around New Caledonia is associated with the main bathymetric structures, i.e. continental slope, shelf breaks, small- and large-scale ridges, and seamounts, strongly dominated by the semidiurnal tide and low-vertical modes, with a strong signature in SSH. It is found to be a major source of tidal energy propagation toward the open ocean despite enhanced energy dissipation rates close to the generation sites. Mesoscale eddy variability is shown to be a potential source of the loss of tidal coherence (or tidal incoherence) due to eddy-internal tide interactions, either through the refraction of tidal beam energy propagation by mesoscale currents toward the open ocean or by mesoscale-eddy-induced variations of barotropic-to-baroclinic energy conversion. Important insight is provided by in-situ observations of autonomous underwater gliders. They reveal the numerical model’s realism of internal-tide dynamics while proving to be a suitable in-situ platform to infer internal tides, including SSH signature. SWOT SSH observability of balanced and unbalanced motions represents a challenge around New Caledonia because the internal tide dominates SSH variance at wavelengths similar to those of balanced motion at scales less than 200 km wavelength. Particular emphasis is given to the incoherent tide, which manifests in SSH at scales less than 100 km, while limiting the observability of mesoscale and submesoscale motions. An outlook is given on the impact of internal tides on the mesoscale to submesoscale circulation with promising routes for future work on cross-scale energy exchanges and the closure of the oceanic energy budget. Finally, the comprehensive description of internal-tide dynamics conducted in this thesis has important implications for the New Caledonia marine ecosystem, with the hope of paving the way for the island’s efforts in the conservation of marine protected areas.

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