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Nonlinearly interacting entrainment due to shear and convection in the surface ocean

Large-eddy simulations were performed to investigate the entrainment buoyancy flux at the mixed layer base due to nonlinearly interacting shear-driven turbulence (ST) and convective turbulence (CT). The fluxes due to pure ST and pure CT were first evaluated, and their scalings were derived. The entr...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ushijima, Yusuke, Yoshikawa, Yutaka
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9198105/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35701576
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14098-w
Descripción
Sumario:Large-eddy simulations were performed to investigate the entrainment buoyancy flux at the mixed layer base due to nonlinearly interacting shear-driven turbulence (ST) and convective turbulence (CT). The fluxes due to pure ST and pure CT were first evaluated, and their scalings were derived. The entrainment flux due to coexisting ST and CT was then evaluated and compared to the scaling-based fluxes due to the pure turbulences. It was found that nonlinear effects reduce the entrainment flux by [Formula: see text] when the turbulent kinetic energy production rates of ST and CT are comparable. The mixing parameterization schemes used in ocean general circulation models (OGCMs) fail to accurately reproduce the mixing due to the pure turbulences and/or the nonlinear effects, and thus the mixed layer depth (MLD). Because analysis using global datasets suggests that nonlinear effects are large at the mid-latitudes, these results indicate that the nonlinear effects might be responsible for the deep MLD biases in OGCMs and that mixing parameterization schemes need to be improved to correctly represent ocean surface mixing due to shear and convection, as well as waves, in OGCMs.