The application of internal-wave dissipation models to a region of strong mixing

Abstract

Several models now exist for predicting the dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy, ε, in the oceanic thermocline as a function of the large-scale properties of the internal gravity wave field. In this paper simultaneous measurements of the internal wave field and ε from a drifting ice camp in the eastern Arctic Ocean are used to evaluate the efficacy of existing models in a region with an anomalous wave field and energetic mixing. By explicitly retaining the vertical wavenumber bandwidth parameter, β*, models can still provide reasonable estimates of the dissipation rate. The amount of data required to estimate β* is, however, substantially greater than for cases where the canonical vertical wavenumber spectrum can be assumed. -from Authors