Eddies, waves and instabilities

Convener: Nils Brüggemann | Co-conveners: Manita Chouksey, Knut Klingbeil, Stephan Juricke, Friederike Pollmann

Abstract submission

Energy conservation is a fundamental physical principle, yet it is generally not achieved in state-of-the-art models of geophysical flows owing to, for instance, the governing equations and their discretization, the coupling between model components, or the parameterization of unresolved processes. It is thus non-trivial to close the energy budget, which becomes even more challenging due to the multitude of oceanic processes that undergo nonlinear interactions and drive energy transfers across a range of scales: from eddies to internal waves to small-scale turbulence. This session is devoted to understanding these multi-scale interactions and associated energy transfers in the ocean, which are ultimately crucial for developing energetically consistent models, confidently predict climatic changes, and quantify associated uncertainties, and thus improve our understanding of the climate system.

We invite contributions on oceanic energy pathways and their consistent representation in numerical models from theoretical, modeling, and observational perspectives. These include, but are not limited to, the processes involving mesoscale eddies, internal gravity waves, instabilities, turbulence, small-scale mixing, and ocean-atmosphere coupling. Contributions on energy transfer processes and their quantification from in-situ measurements, (semi-)analytical approaches, and numerical models, as well as their parameterizations and spurious energy transfers associated with numerical discretizations, are also welcome along with interdisciplinary contributions such as novel applications in data science that diagnose, quantify, and minimize energetic inconsistencies and related uncertainties.
We particularly encourage early career researchers to participate in this session.