University of Cambridge > Talks.cam > Geophysical and Environmental Processes > A full-tensor approach for parameterising oceanic eddy tracer transport

A full-tensor approach for parameterising oceanic eddy tracer transport

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  • UserMichael Haigh, Imperial College London
  • ClockMonday 25 October 2021, 13:00-14:00
  • HouseMR5, CMS.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Prof. Jerome Neufeld.

In numerical ocean models the effects of unresolved mesoscale eddies on large-scale tracer distributions are typically represented by a turbulent diffusion closure. Such a closure is characterised by a diffusivity coefficient for which scalars, diagonal tensors and full tensors have been proposed. We opt for the most general full-tensor approach applied to an eddy-resolving tracer simulation with no additional averaging or simplifications. The resulting ‘transport tensor’ exhibits new levels of spatio-temporal complexity and its properties—such as negative eigenvalues, non-uniqueness and its relationship with the large-scale flow—contrast those of eddy diffusion closures currently implemented in numerical ocean models. This work suggests a rethink of the role of mesoscale eddies and their representation in numerical models may be required in order to improve our ability to simulate large-scale tracer distributions.

This talk is part of the Geophysical and Environmental Processes series.

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