Impacts of tidally-driven mixing on the Early Eocene Ocean

Mixing in the ocean interior is largely fueled by internal tides that bring energy available for the irreversible mixing of the deep ocean. However, the inclusion of mixing schemes to represent the breaking of internal waves is not always included in ocean and earth system models, a fortiori in models applied to the deep-time for which estimates of the energy dissipated by the tides are not always available. Here, we present and analyze two IPSLCM5A2 earth system model simulations of the Early Eocene made under the framework of DeepMIP, which differ by the inclusion of the tidally-driven dissipation estimates of Green and Huber (2013) in one of the simulations. We particularly focus on possible changes in the intensity of the ocean circulation and water mass characteristics and pathways as well as on the implications of the absence of tidally-driven mixing for the marine biogeochemistry.