Nonlinear wave-wave interactions in stratified flows: Direct numerical simulations (Q1025078)

This paper describes an exploration of the dynamics of oceanic internal waves using numerical simulations. The object is to test the hypothesis that the energy spectra of internal waves in the ocean tend to have a universal form represented by the Garrett-Munk spectrum. This would be somewhat surprising given the complexity of the system. The energy of the waves is transferred by nonlinear interactions among wave numbers from large scale to small scale and is dissipated in the small spatial scale by wave breaking. In addition, the energy spectra of internal waves have very large ranges, with horizontal wavelengths varying over four orders of magnitude while vertical wavelengths and the time vary over two orders of magnitude. The authors carried out direct numerical simulations of a reduced model of stratified rotating turbulence. Their model contained only wave modes of stratified wave turbulence and completely excluded vortices and horizontally uniform vertical shears. While they were looking for evidence of a ``universal'' spectrum, the authors observed strong dependence on the details of their numerical experiments. At the same time, their numerical model did reproduce some key features of oceanic internal waves. For example, they observed: (1) energy tends to accumulate at the horizontally longest waves, (2) a realistic integrated horizontal inverse square \(k\) spectrum, and (3) a realistic integrated frequency inverse square \(\omega\) spectrum.