Andrey Y. Shcherbina

Dense water formation on the northwestern shelf of the Okhotsk Sea: 1. Direct observations of brine rejection

late February, while the active brine rejection continued for several more weeks based on indirect evidence from water properties and ice cover. This termination was possibly due to the onset of baroclinic instability of the density front at the polynya edge facilitating offshore eddy transport of the density anomaly. Observed periodic baroclinic tide intensification events are hypothesized to be an indicator of the presence of such baroclinic eddies. No significant density increase was observed at the deeper, offshore mooring, indicating a robust demarcation of the offshore extent of newly formed DSW. The relatively fresh water of the tidally mixed zone inshore of the shelf front was the precursor of the DSW, aided by the late-autumn offshore transition of the front. INDEX TERMS: 4207 Oceanography: General: Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; 4219 Oceanography: General: Continental shelf processes; 4540 Oceanography: Physical: Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes; 4243 Oceanography: General: Marginal and semienclosed seas; KEYWORDS: Okhotsk Sea, brine rejection, dense water formation

The latmix summer campaign: Submesoscale stirring in the upper ocean

AbstractLateral stirring is a basic oceanographic phenomenon affecting the distribution of physical, chemical, and biological fields. Eddy stirring at scales on the order of 100 km (the mesoscale) is fairly well understood and explicitly represented in modern eddy-resolving numerical models of global ocean circulation. The same cannot be said for smaller-scale stirring processes. Here, the authors describe a major oceanographic field experiment aimed at observing and understanding the processes responsible for stirring at scales of 0.1–10 km. Stirring processes of varying intensity were studied in the Sargasso Sea eddy field approximately 250 km southeast of Cape Hatteras. Lateral variability of water-mass properties, the distribution of microscale turbulence, and the evolution of several patches of inert dye were studied with an array of shipboard, autonomous, and airborne instruments. Observations were made at two sites, characterized by weak and moderate background mesoscale straining, to contrast diff...

Near-Surface Frontal Zone Trapping and Deep Upward Propagation of Internal Wave Energy in the Japan/East Sea

The full-depth current structure in the Japan/East Sea was investigated using direct velocity measurements performed with lowered and shipboard acoustic current Doppler profilers. Rotary spectral analysis was used to investigate the three-dimensional energy distribution as well as wave polarization with respect to vertical wavenumbers, yielding information about the net energy propagation direction. Highly energetic near-inertial downward-propagating waves were found in localized patches along the southern edge of the subpolar front. Between 500- and 2500-m depth, the basin average energy propagation was found to be upward, with the maximum of relative difference between upward- and downward-propagating energy lying at about 1500-m depth. This difference was most pronounced in the southeastern part of the basin.

Characterizing Thermohaline Intrusions in the North Pacific Subtropical Frontal Zone

Abstract A monthlong field survey in July 2007, focused on the North Pacific subtropical frontal zone (STFZ) near 30°N, 158°W, combined towed depth-cycling conductivity–temperature–depth (CTD) profiling with shipboard current observations. Measurements were used to investigate the distribution and structure of thermohaline intrusions. The study revealed that local extrema of vertical salinity profiles, often used as intrusion indicators, were only a subset of a wider class of distortions in thermohaline fields due to interleaving processes. A new method to investigate interleaving based on diapycnal spiciness curvature was used to describe an expanded class of laterally coherent intrusions. STFZ intrusions were characterized by their overall statistics and by a number of case studies. Thermohaline interleaving was particularly intense within 5 km of two partially compensated fronts, where intrusions with both positive and negative salinity anomalies were widespread. The vertical and cross-frontal scales o...

Symmetric Instability, Inertial Oscillations, and Turbulence at the Gulf Stream Front

AbstractThe passage of a winter storm over the Gulf Stream observed with a Lagrangian float and hydrographic and velocity surveys provided a unique opportunity to study how the interaction of inertial oscillations, the front, and symmetric instability (SI) shapes the stratification, shear, and turbulence in the upper ocean under unsteady forcing. During the storm, the rapid rise and rotation of the winds excited inertial motions. Acting on the front, these sheared motions modulate the stratification in the surface boundary layer. At the same time, cooling and downfront winds generated a symmetrically unstable flow. The observed turbulent kinetic energy dissipation exceeded what could be attributed to atmospheric forcing, implying SI drew energy from the front. The peak excess dissipation, which occurred just prior to a minimum in stratification, surpassed that predicted for steady SI turbulence, suggesting the importance of unsteady dynamics. The measurements are interpreted using a large-eddy simulation ...

Three-Dimensional Structure and Temporal Evolution of Submesoscale Thermohaline Intrusions in the North Pacific Subtropical Frontal Zone

Abstract Four instances of persistent intrusive deformation of the North Pacific Subtropical Front were tagged individually by a Lagrangian float and tracked for several days. Each feature was mapped in three dimensions using repeat towed observations referenced to the float. Isohaline surface deformations in the frontal zone included sheetlike folds elongated in the alongfront direction and narrow tongues extending across the front. All deformations appeared as protrusions of relatively cold, and fresh, water across the front. No corresponding features of the opposite sign or isolated lenslike structures were observed. The sheets were O(10 m) thick, protruded about 10 km into the warm saline side of the front, and were coherent for 10–30 km along the front. Having about the same thickness and cross-frontal extent as the sheets, tongues extended less than 5 km along the front. All of the intrusions persisted as long as they were followed, several days to one week. Their structures evolved on both inertial...

Observations of Near-Inertial Internal Gravity Waves Radiating from a Frontal Jet

AbstractShipboard ADCP and towed CTD measurements are presented of a near-inertial internal gravity wave radiating away from a zonal jet associated with the Subtropical Front in the North Pacific. Three-dimensional spatial surveys indicate persistent alternating shear layers sloping downward and equatorward from the front. As a result, depth-integrated ageostrophic shear increases sharply equatorward of the front. The layers have a vertical wavelength of about 250 m and a slope consistent with a wave of frequency 1.01f. They extend at least 100 km south of the front. Time series confirm that the shear is associated with a downward-propagating near-inertial wave with frequency within 20% of f. A slab mixed layer model forced with shipboard and NCEP reanalysis winds suggests that wind forcing was too weak to generate the wave. Likewise, trapping of the near-inertial motions at the low-vorticity edge of the front can be ruled out because of the extension of the features well south of it. Instead, the authors...

Dense water formation on the northwestern shelf of the Okhotsk Sea: 2. Quantifying the transports

an estimated 8.6 � 10 12 m 3 of DSW was formed during the winter of 1999–2000, resulting in a mean annual production rate of 0.3 Sv. According to direct observations, the export rate of DSW during this period varied from negligibly small in autumn to 0.75 ± 0.27 Sv in winter (January–February), to 0.34 ± 0.12 Sv in spring (March–April). From these observations the mean annual export rate can be estimated to be 0.27 Sv. The same relationships used to obtain the integral estimates were also applied differentially using an advective approach incorporating realistic flow and heat flux fields, which allowed direct comparison with the moored observations. The comparison highlights the importance of along-shelf advection and cross-shelf eddy transport to the accurate parameterization of DSW formation. INDEX TERMS: 4207 Oceanography: General: Arctic and Antarctic oceanography; 4540 Oceanography: Physical: Ice mechanics and air/sea/ice exchange processes; 4283 Oceanography: General: Water masses; 4219 Oceanography: General: Continental shelf processes;

Offshore Transport of Shelf Waters through Interaction of Vortices with a Shelfbreak Current

AbstractInteractions between vortices and a shelfbreak current are investigated, with particular attention to the exchange of waters between the continental shelf and slope. The nonlinear, three-dimensional interaction between an anticyclonic vortex and the shelfbreak current is studied in the laboratory while varying the ratio e of the maximum azimuthal velocity in the vortex to the maximum alongshelf velocity in the shelfbreak current. Strong interactions between the shelfbreak current and the vortex are observed when e > 1; weak interactions are found when e < 1. When the anticyclonic vortex comes in contact with the shelfbreak front during a strong interaction, a streamer of shelf water is drawn offshore and wraps anticyclonically around the vortex. Measurements of the offshore transport and identification of the particle trajectories in the shelfbreak current drawn offshore from the vortex allow quantification of the fraction of the shelfbreak current that is deflected onto the slope; this fraction i...

Ice-Draft Profiling from Bottom-Mounted ADCP Data

Abstract The feasibility of ice-draft profiling using an upward-looking bottom-mounted acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) is demonstrated. Ice draft is determined as the difference between the instrument depth, derived from high-accuracy pressure data, and the distance to the lower ice surface, determined by the ADCP echo travel time. Algorithms for the surface range estimate from the water-track echo intensity profiles, data quality control, and correction procedures have been developed. Sources of error in using an ADCP as an ice profiler were investigated using the models of sound signal propagation and reflection. The effects of atmospheric pressure changes, sound speed variation, finite instrument beamwidth, hardware signal processing, instrument tilt, beam misalignment, and vertical sensor offset are quantified. The developed algorithms are tested using the data from the winter-long ADCP deployment on the northwestern shelf of the Okhotsk Sea.