The growth and saturation of submesoscale instabilities in the presence of a barotropic jet
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Publication Date
2018-11Journal Title
Journal of Physical Oceanography
ISSN
0022-3670
Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Volume
48
Issue
11
Pages
2779-2797
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
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Stamper, M., Taylor, J., & Fox-Kemper, B. (2018). The growth and saturation of submesoscale instabilities in the presence of a barotropic jet. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 48 (11), 2779-2797. https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-18-0022.1
Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Motivated by recent observations of submesoscales in the Southern Ocean, we use nonlinear numerical simulations and a linear stability analysis to examine the influence of a barotropic jet on submesoscale instabilities at an isolated front. Simulations of the nonhydrostatic Boussinesq equations with a strong barotropic jet (approximately matching the observed conditions) show that submesoscale disturbances and strong vertical velocities are confined to a small region near the initial frontal location. In contrast, without a barotropic jet, submesoscale eddies propagate to the edges of the computational domain and smear the mean frontal structure. Several intermediate jet strengths are also considered. A linear stability analysis reveals that the barotropic jet has a modest influence on the growth rate of linear disturbances to the initial conditions, with at most a ~20% reduction in the growth rate of the most unstable mode. On the other hand, a basic state formed by averaging the flow at the end of the simulation with a strong barotropic jet is linearly stable, suggesting that nonlinear processes modify the mean flow and stabilize the front.</jats:p>
Sponsorship
Natural Environment Research Council (NE/J010472/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-18-0022.1
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/286678
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