Prolonged thermocline warming by near-inertial internal waves in the wakes of tropical cyclones.

Turbulence-enhanced mixing of upper ocean heat allows interaction between the tropical atmosphere and cold water masses that impact climate at higher latitudes thereby regulating air-sea coupling and poleward heat transport. Tropical cyclones (TCs) can drastically enhance upper ocean mixing and generate powerful near-inertial internal waves (NIWs) that propagate down into the deep ocean. Globally, downward mixing of heat during TC passage causes warming in the seasonal thermocline and pumps 0.

Physics-informed deep-learning parameterization of ocean vertical mixing improves climate simulations.

Uncertainties in ocean-mixing parameterizations are primary sources for ocean and climate modeling biases. Due to lack of process understanding, traditional physics-driven parameterizations perform unsatisfactorily in the tropics. Recent advances in the deep-learning method and the new availability of long-term turbulence measurements provide an opportunity to explore data-driven approaches to parameterizing oceanic vertical-mixing processes.

Variations in Ocean Mixing from Seconds to Years.

Over the past several decades, there has developed a community-wide appreciation for the importance of mixing at the smallest scales to geophysical fluid dynamics on all scales. This appreciation has spawned greater participation in the investigation of ocean mixing and new ways to measure it. These are welcome developments given the tremendous separation in scales between the basins, [Formula: see text]) m, and the turbulence, [Formula: see text]) m, and the fact that turbulence that leads to thermodynamically irreversible mixing in high-Reynolds-number geophysical flows varies by at least eight orders of magnitude in both space and time.

Ocean feedback to pulses of the Madden-Julian Oscillation in the equatorial Indian Ocean.

Dynamical understanding of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) has been elusive, and predictive capabilities therefore limited. New measurements of the ocean's response to the intense surface winds and cooling by two successive MJO pulses, separated by several weeks, show persistent ocean currents and subsurface mixing after pulse passage, thereby reducing ocean heat energy available for later pulses by an amount significantly greater than via atmospheric surface cooling alone. This suggests that thermal mixing in the upper ocean from a particular pulse might affect the amplitude of the following pulse.

The formation and fate of internal waves in the South China Sea.

Internal gravity waves, the subsurface analogue of the familiar surface gravity waves that break on beaches, are ubiquitous in the ocean. Because of their strong vertical and horizontal currents, and the turbulent mixing caused by their breaking, they affect a panoply of ocean processes, such as the supply of nutrients for photosynthesis, sediment and pollutant transport and acoustic transmission; they also pose hazards for man-made structures in the ocean. Generated primarily by the wind and the tides, internal waves can travel thousands of kilometres from their sources before breaking, making it challenging to observe them and to include them in numerical climate models, which are sensitive to their effects.

Seasonal sea surface cooling in the equatorial Pacific cold tongue controlled by ocean mixing.

Sea surface temperature (SST) is a critical control on the atmosphere, and numerical models of atmosphere-ocean circulation emphasize its accurate prediction. Yet many models demonstrate large, systematic biases in simulated SST in the equatorial 'cold tongues' (expansive regions of net heat uptake from the atmosphere) of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, particularly with regard to a central but little-understood feature of tropical oceans: a strong seasonal cycle. The biases may be related to the inability of models to constrain turbulent mixing realistically, given that turbulent mixing, combined with seasonal variations in atmospheric heating, determines SST.

Mid-frequency sound propagation through internal waves at short range with synoptic oceanographic observations.

Preliminary results are presented from an analysis of mid-frequency acoustic transmission data collected at range 550 m during the Shallow Water 2006 Experiment. The acoustic data were collected on a vertical array immediately before, during, and after the passage of a nonlinear internal wave on 18 August, 2006. Using oceanographic data collected at a nearby location, a plane-wave model for the nonlinear internal wave's position as a function of time is developed.

River plumes as a source of large-amplitude internal waves in the coastal ocean.

Satellite images have long revealed the surface expression of large amplitude internal waves that propagate along density interfaces beneath the sea surface. Internal waves are typically the most energetic high-frequency events in the coastal ocean, displacing water parcels by up to 100 m and generating strong currents and turbulence that mix nutrients into near-surface waters for biological utilization. While internal waves are known to be generated by tidal currents over ocean-bottom topography, they have also been observed frequently in the absence of any apparent tide-topography interactions.

From tides to mixing along the Hawaiian ridge.

The cascade from tides to turbulence has been hypothesized to serve as a major energy pathway for ocean mixing. We investigated this cascade along the Hawaiian Ridge using observations and numerical models. A divergence of internal tidal energy flux observed at the ridge agrees with the predictions of internal tide models.