Event
Student Seminar: Alexis Riopel
Wednesday, January 27, 2016 14:30to15:00
Burnside Hall
Room 934, 805 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3A 0B9, CA
Near-Inertial Waves and their Interaction with Geostrophic Currents
Near-inertial waves (NIWs), i.e. inertia-gravity waves with a frequency close to f, account for about half of the wave energy in the ocean. Mainly forced by wind, NIWs propagate downward into the ocean鈥檚 interior. NIWs are ubiquitous in the oceans, superimposed over geostrophic currents. However, it is unclear if they exchange energy with the balanced flow, thus influencing the circulation. Using a two-layer shallow-water model, we investigate this question. We compare our results with those from the Xie & Vanneste (2015) model, which highlights energy transfers from the balanced flow to NIWs potential energy. We find the same result, though via a different mechanism.