Abstract
On the spherical earth, and in the absence of a background flow, the poleward propagation of near-inertial oscillations is restricted by the turning latitude. A background flow, on the other hand, provides a way to increase the apparent frequency of near-inertial waves through Doppler shifting. In this note, it is shown that near-inertial oscillations can be advected to latitudes higher than their turning latitude. Associated with the poleward advection there is a squeezing of the meridional wavelength. A numerical model is used to verify this result. The squeezed inertial oscillations are vulnerable to nonlinear interactions, which could eventually lead to small-scale dissipation and mixing.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1480-1488 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Journal of Physical Oceanography |
Volume | 35 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Aug 2005 |