Unpredictability of internal M2

Abstract

Current observations from a shelf sea, continental slopes and the abyssal North-East Atlantic Ocean are all dominated by the semidiurnal lunar (M 2) tide. It is shown that motions at M2 vary at usually large barotropic and coherent baroclinic scales, >50 km horizontally and >0.5 H vertically. H represents the waterdepth. Such M2-scales are observed even close to topography, the potential source of baroclinic, "internal" tidal waves. In contrast, incoherent small-scale, ∼10 km horizontally and ∼0.1 H vertically, baroclinic motions are dominated around f, the local inertial frequency, and/or near 2Ω≈ S2, the semidiurnal solar tidal frequency. Ω represents the Earth's rotational vector. This confirms earlier suggestions that small-scale baroclinic M2-motions generally do not exist in the ocean in any predictable manner, except in beams very near, <10 km horizontally, to their source. As a result, M2-motions are not directly important for generating shear and internal wave induced mixing. Indirectly however, they may contribute to ocean mixing if transfer to small-scale motions at f and/or S 2 and at high internal wave frequencies can be proven. Also far from topography, small-scale motions are found at either one or both of the latter frequencies. Different suggestions for the scales at these particular frequencies are discussed, ranging from the variability of " background" density gradients and associated divergence and focusing of internal wave rays to the removal of the internal tidal energy by non-linear interactions. Near f and S2 particular short-wave inertio-gravity wave bounds are found in the limits of strong and very weak stratification, which are often observed in small-scale layers.