Eddy-Mean Flow Interactions in Western Boundary Current Jets: An Observationally-Driven Theoretical Study

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Dr. Stephanie Waterman, National Oceanography Centre and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London
• Wednesday 30 June 2010, 11:00-12:00
• British Antarctic Survey, Room 187.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Zhaomin Wang.

Eddies can play an important role in determining the large-scale or low-frequency circulation. This is especially true in Western Boundary Current (WBC) jet regions such as the Gulf Stream or Kuroshio Extension regions, where eddy kinetic energies are orders of magnitude larger than most other regions of the world ocean. In this talk, I present a study of the role of eddies and eddy-mean flow interactions in the dynamics of WBC jet systems using both theoretical and observational approaches. New observations in the Kuroshio Extension located at the location of maximum eddy kinetic energy of the jet motivate an idealized study of the role of eddies in the downstream evolution of a WBC jet. The relevance of these theoretical results are in turn tested by comparing model predictions to observations. I will show eddies play a critical role in setting the downstream development of the time-mean jet structure, including fluxing vorticity up the mean gradient and driving time-mean flows which add significantly to the jet transport. This is important to our understanding of what influences mean jet strength, and also to the design of eddy parameterizations which often rely on down-gradient flux closure schemes. Although focussed on WBC jet systems, lessons learned likely apply to the roles eddies play in the zonally-evolving jets of the ACC .

This talk is part of the British Antarctic Survey series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Biology
• British Antarctic Survey
• British Antarctic Survey, Room 187
• Cambridge Environment
• Climate Science Seminars within Cambridge
• Featured lists
• Life Sciences
• Life Sciences
• ME Seminar
• Queens' College Politics Society
• School of Physical Sciences
• Talks related to atmosphere and ocean dynamics and climate science
• my_list
• ob366-ai4er
• other talks

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.