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Dissipation of mesoscale eddies and its contribution to mixing in the northern South China Sea
It is reported that turbulent mixing is enhanced in the South China Sea (SCS), and it is highly variable in both space and time. Generation and breaking of internal tides has been identified as the main process to drive turbulent mixing in the SCS, while the contributions from other processes are no...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6345983/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30679478 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36610-x |
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author | Yang, Qingxuan Nikurashin, Maxim Sasaki, Hideharu Sun, Hui Tian, Jiwei |
author_facet | Yang, Qingxuan Nikurashin, Maxim Sasaki, Hideharu Sun, Hui Tian, Jiwei |
author_sort | Yang, Qingxuan |
collection | PubMed |
description | It is reported that turbulent mixing is enhanced in the South China Sea (SCS), and it is highly variable in both space and time. Generation and breaking of internal tides has been identified as the main process to drive turbulent mixing in the SCS, while the contributions from other processes are not clear enough. Here we investigate the potential contribution from mesoscale eddies to turbulent mixing in the SCS using a high resolution numerical simulation. Our results show that mesoscale eddies in the SCS effectively dissipate over complex rough topography and indicate that the generation of submesoscale motions and lee waves are two pathways for the transfer of mesoscale eddy energy down to small dissipation scales. The energy loss from mesoscale eddies near the Xisha Islands is estimated to be sufficient to sustain turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate of O (10(−8)) W/kg. This study suggests an alternative and potentially efficient mechanism to internal tides for the local maintenance of turbulent mixing in the SCS. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6345983 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-63459832019-01-29 Dissipation of mesoscale eddies and its contribution to mixing in the northern South China Sea Yang, Qingxuan Nikurashin, Maxim Sasaki, Hideharu Sun, Hui Tian, Jiwei Sci Rep Article It is reported that turbulent mixing is enhanced in the South China Sea (SCS), and it is highly variable in both space and time. Generation and breaking of internal tides has been identified as the main process to drive turbulent mixing in the SCS, while the contributions from other processes are not clear enough. Here we investigate the potential contribution from mesoscale eddies to turbulent mixing in the SCS using a high resolution numerical simulation. Our results show that mesoscale eddies in the SCS effectively dissipate over complex rough topography and indicate that the generation of submesoscale motions and lee waves are two pathways for the transfer of mesoscale eddy energy down to small dissipation scales. The energy loss from mesoscale eddies near the Xisha Islands is estimated to be sufficient to sustain turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate of O (10(−8)) W/kg. This study suggests an alternative and potentially efficient mechanism to internal tides for the local maintenance of turbulent mixing in the SCS. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-01-24 /pmc/articles/PMC6345983/ /pubmed/30679478 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36610-x Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Yang, Qingxuan Nikurashin, Maxim Sasaki, Hideharu Sun, Hui Tian, Jiwei Dissipation of mesoscale eddies and its contribution to mixing in the northern South China Sea |
title | Dissipation of mesoscale eddies and its contribution to mixing in the northern South China Sea |
title_full | Dissipation of mesoscale eddies and its contribution to mixing in the northern South China Sea |
title_fullStr | Dissipation of mesoscale eddies and its contribution to mixing in the northern South China Sea |
title_full_unstemmed | Dissipation of mesoscale eddies and its contribution to mixing in the northern South China Sea |
title_short | Dissipation of mesoscale eddies and its contribution to mixing in the northern South China Sea |
title_sort | dissipation of mesoscale eddies and its contribution to mixing in the northern south china sea |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6345983/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30679478 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-36610-x |
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