Abyssal hill roughness impact on internal tide generation: linear theory

Caroline Muller (1) , Angélique Melet (2) , Maxim Nikurashin (3)

1 LadHyX - Laboratoire d'hydrodynamique
2 GFDL - NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
3 IMAS - Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies [Hobart]

Internal tide driven mixing plays a key role in sustaining the deep ocean stratification and meridional overturning circulation. Internal tides can be generated by topographic horizontal scales ranging from hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers. State of the art topographic products hardly resolve scales smaller than ~10 km in the deep ocean, over which abyssal hills are the dominant ocean floor roughness fabric. An evaluation of the impact of abyssal hill roughness on internal-tide generation is presented in this study.

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère

Caroline Muller, Angélique Melet, Maxim Nikurashin. Abyssal hill roughness impact on internal tide generation: linear theory. Symposium OGOA, May 2013, Lyon, France. ⟨hal-00848506⟩