TY - JOUR
T1 - The role of small-scale topography in modulating eddy scale in the northern South China Sea
AU - Yang, Zhibin
AU - Jing, Zhao
AU - Zhai, Xiaoming
N1 - The model configuration files are available online: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/M2QSGG
Acknowledgments: ZY and ZJ are supported by Science and Technology Innovation Foundation of Laoshan Laboratory (No. LSKJ202202501), Taishan Scholar Funds (tsqn201909052), Qingdao applied research project. The research presented in this paper was carried out on the High Performance Computing Cluster supported by National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin.
PY - 2023/3
Y1 - 2023/3
N2 - A high-resolution nested model initialized with either smooth or synthetically-generated rough topography is used to investigate the role of small-scale topography in modulating eddy scales in the northern South China Sea. It is found that while adding small-scale topography leads to negligible changes in the surface eddy scales and their seasonal cycle, it significantly reduces the bottom eddy scales by about 30-40%. This reduction in bottom eddy scales is mainly contributed by three processes: wave generation due to flow interaction with rough topography and subsequent wave propagation into the ocean interior, forward energy cascade associated with processes such as nonpropagating form drag effect, and the influence of small-scale topography on the deep boundary current. Our results highlight the importance of small‐scale topography in setting the eddy length scales particularly in the deep ocean.
AB - A high-resolution nested model initialized with either smooth or synthetically-generated rough topography is used to investigate the role of small-scale topography in modulating eddy scales in the northern South China Sea. It is found that while adding small-scale topography leads to negligible changes in the surface eddy scales and their seasonal cycle, it significantly reduces the bottom eddy scales by about 30-40%. This reduction in bottom eddy scales is mainly contributed by three processes: wave generation due to flow interaction with rough topography and subsequent wave propagation into the ocean interior, forward energy cascade associated with processes such as nonpropagating form drag effect, and the influence of small-scale topography on the deep boundary current. Our results highlight the importance of small‐scale topography in setting the eddy length scales particularly in the deep ocean.
U2 - 10.1029/2022JC019524
DO - 10.1029/2022JC019524
M3 - Article
VL - 128
JO - Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans
JF - Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans
SN - 2169-9275
IS - 3
M1 - e2022JC019524
ER -