Nicole L. Jones

The Influence of Whitecapping Waves on the Vertical Structure of Turbulence in a Shallow Estuarine Embayment

Abstract The vertical distribution of the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate was measured using an array of four acoustic Doppler velocimeters in the shallow embayment of Grizzly Bay, San Francisco Bay, California. Owing to the combination of wind and tide forcing in this shallow system, the surface and bottom boundary layers overlapped. Whitecapping waves were generated for a significant spectral peak steepness greater than 0.05 or above a wind speed of 3 m s−1. Under conditions of whitecapping waves, the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate in the upper portion of the water column was greatly enhanced, relative to the predictions of wind stress wall-layer theory. Instead, the dissipation followed a modified deep-water breaking-wave scaling. Near the bed (bottom 10% of the water column), the dissipation measurements were either equal to or less than that predicted by wall-layer theory. Stratification due to concentration gradients in suspended sediment was identified as the likely cause for t...

Experiments on the generation of internal waves over continental shelf topography

Experiments were performed to examine the generation of internal waves by a barotropic tide forcing a continuously stratified fluid over idealized continental shelf/slope topography. A range of responses was observed, including the generation of both internal wave beams and boundary layer boluses, primarily dependent on the values of both the Reynolds number and the topographic steepness parameter. The formation of beams required a critical bottom slope, whilst for bolus formation a large vertical fluid excursion was necessary. A bolus formed when the non-dimensional vertical excursion parameter Δ hN / W 0 > 3.2. Here Δ h is the vertical excursion, N is the buoyancy frequency and W 0 is the near-bottom vertical velocity associated with the local depth-averaged velocity. We simplified the classification of the observed flow regimes using a generation parameter G , defined as the ratio of a Reynolds number to the topographic steepness parameter. The estimated flow regime boundaries were: for G G G G > 400 there was no bolus observed. We estimated that approximately 4% of the barotropic energy was converted to baroclinic energy when beams were generated.

Near-inertial ocean response to tropical cyclone forcing on the Australian North-West Shelf

The Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) was applied to the Australian North-West Shelf (NWS) to hindcast the ocean response to four intense historical tropical cyclones (TCs). While the four cyclones had very different trajectories across the NWS, all passed within 150 km of a long-term vertical mooring located on the continental shelf in 125 m depth. The observed ocean response at this relatively shallow, Southern Hemisphere shelf site was characterized by the development of a peak in the counter-clockwise (CCW) near-inertial kinetic energy, mixed layer deepening, and subsequent restratification. Strong near-inertial isotherm oscillations were also observed following two of the cyclones. ROMS reproduced these features and also showed that the peak in the near-inertial CCW kinetic energy was observed on the left side of each cyclone trajectory. The time rate of change of near-inertial kinetic energy depended strongly on the storm Rossby number, i.e., defined based on the storm speed, the storm length scale, and the Coriolis frequency. The shallow water depth on the NWS resulted in first, a more rapid decay of near-inertial oscillations than in the deep ocean, and second a generation efficiency (the ratio of near-inertial power to the rate of wind work) of up to 10%, smaller than found for cyclones propagating across deeper water. The total energy put into near-inertial motions is nevertheless large compared to the background tidal energy. The rapid decay of near-inertial motions emphasizes the importance of frictional effects in characterizing the response to cyclone forcing in shallow seas.

Internal-Tide Spectroscopy and Prediction in the Timor Sea

AbstractSpectral analyses of two 3.5-yr mooring records from the Timor Sea quantified the coherence of mode-0 (surface) and mode-1 (internal) tides with the astronomical tidal potential. The noncoherent tides had well-defined variance and were most accurately quantified for tidal species (as opposed to constituents) in long records (>6 months). On the continental slope (465 m), the semidiurnal mode-0 and mode-1 velocity and mode-1 pressure variance were 95%, 68%, and 56% coherent, respectively. On the continental shelf (145 m), the semidiurnal mode-0 and mode-1 velocity and mode-1 pressure variance were 98%, 34%, and 42% coherent, respectively. The response method produced time series of the semidiurnal coherent and noncoherent tides. The spectra and decorrelation time scales of the semidiurnal tidal amplitudes were similar to those of the barotropic mean flow and mode-1 eigenspeed (~4 days), suggesting local mesoscale variability shapes noncoherent tidal variability. Over long time scales (>30 days), mod...

Estimating Turbulent Dissipation from Microstructure Shear Measurements Using Maximum Likelihood Spectral Fitting over the Inertial and Viscous Subranges

AbstractA technique is presented to derive the dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy ϵ by using the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) to fit a theoretical or known empirical model to turbulence shear spectral observations. The commonly used integration method relies on integrating the shear spectra in the viscous range, thus requiring the resolution of the highest wavenumbers of the turbulence shear spectrum. With current technology, the viscous range is not resolved at sufficiently large wavenumbers to estimate high ϵ; however, long inertial subranges can be resolved, making spectral fitting over both this subrange and the resolved portion of the viscous range an attractive method for deriving ϵ. The MLE takes into account the chi-distributed properties of the spectral observations, and so it does not rely on the log-transformed spectral observations. This fitting technique can thus take advantage of both the inertial and viscous subranges, a portion of both, or simply one of the subranges. This flexi...

Modeling bed shear-stress fluctuations in a shallow tidal channel

Recently, Mathis et al. (2013) developed a model for predicting the instantaneous fluctuations of the wall shear-stress in turbulent boundary layers. This model is based on an inner-outer scale interaction mechanism, incorporating superposition, and amplitude-modulation effects, and the only input required for the model is a time series measurement of the streamwise velocity signal taken in the logarithmic region of the flow. The present study applies this new approach for the first time to environmental flows, for which the near-bed information is typically inaccessible. The data used here are acoustic Doppler velocimeter time series measurements from a shallow tidal channel (Suisun Slough in North San Francisco Bay). We first extract segments of data sharing properties with canonical turbulent boundary layers. The wall (bed) shear-stress model is then applied to these selected data. Statistical and spectral analysis demonstrates that the field data predictions are consistent with laboratory and DNS results. The model is also applied to the whole available data set to demonstrate, even for situations far from the canonical boundary layer case, its ability to preserve the overall Reynolds number trend. The predicted instantaneous bed stress is highly skewed and amplitude modulated with the variations in the large-scale streamwise velocity. Finally, the model is compared to conventional methods employed to predict the bed shear-stress. A large disparity is observed, but the present model is the only one able to predict both the correct spectral content and the probability density function.

Determining Mixing Rates from Concurrent Temperature and Velocity Measurements

AbstractOcean mixing has historically been estimated using Osborn’s model by measuring the rate of dissipation of turbulent kinetic energy ϵ and the background density stratification N while assuming a value of the flux Richardson number . A constant is typically assumed, despite mounting field, laboratory, and modeling evidence that varies. This challenge can be overcome by estimating the turbulent diffusivity of heat using the Osborn–Cox model. This model, however, requires measuring the rate of dissipation of thermal variance χ, which has historically been challenging, particularly in energetic flows because the high wavenumbers of the temperature gradient spectra are unresolved with current technology. To overcome this difficulty, a method is described that determines χ by spectral fitting to the inertial-convective (IC) subrange of the temperature gradient spectra. While this concept has been exploited for moored time series, particularly near the bottom boundary, it has yet to be adapted to vertical...

Ocean Transport Pathways to a World Heritage Fringing Coral Reef: Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia.

A Lagrangian particle tracking model driven by a regional ocean circulation model was used to investigate the seasonally varying connectivity patterns within the shelf circulation surrounding the 300 km long Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia (WA) during 2009–2010. Forward-in-time simulations revealed that surface water was transported equatorward and offshore in summer due to the upwelling-favorable winds. In winter, however, water was transported polewards down the WA coast due to the seasonally strong Leeuwin Current. Using backward-in-time simulations, the subsurface transport pathways revealed two main source regions of shelf water reaching Ningaloo Reef: (1) a year-round source to the northeast in the upper 100 m of water column; and (2) during the summer, an additional source offshore and to the west of Ningaloo in depths between ~30 and ~150 m. Transient wind-driven coastal upwelling, onshore geostrophic transport and stirring by offshore eddies were identified as the important mechanisms influencing the source water origins. The identification of these highly time-dependent transport pathways and source water locations is an essential step towards quantifying how key material (e.g., nutrients, larvae, contaminants, etc.) is exchanged between Ningaloo Reef and the surrounding shelf ocean, and how this is mechanistically coupled to the complex ocean dynamics in this region.

Acquiring Long-Term Turbulence Measurements from Moored Platforms Impacted by Motion

AbstractFor measurements from either profiling or moored instruments, several processing techniques exist to estimate the dissipation rate of turbulent kinetic energy ϵ, a core quantity used to determine oceanic mixing rates. Moored velocimeters can provide long-term measurements of ϵ, but they can be plagued by motion-induced contamination. To remove this contamination, two methodologies are presented that use independent measurements of the instrument’s acceleration and rotation in space. The first is derived from the relationship between the spectra (cospectra) and the variance (covariance) of a time series. The cospectral technique recovers the environmental (or true) velocity spectrum by summing the measured spectrum, the motion-induced spectrum, and the cospectrum between the motion-induced and measured velocities. The second technique recovers the environmental spectrum by correcting the measured spectrum with the squared coherency, essentially assuming that the measured signal shares variance with...

Impact of windage on ocean surface Lagrangian coherent structures

Windage, the additional direct, wind-induced drift of material floating at the free surface of the ocean, plays a crucial role in the surface transport of biological and contaminant material. Lagrangian coherent structures (LCS) uncover the hidden organizing structures that underlie material transport by fluid flows. Despite numerous studies in which LCS ideas have been applied to ocean surface transport scenarios, such as oil spills, debris fields and biological material, there has been no consideration of the influence of windage on LCS. Here we investigate and demonstrate the impact of windage on ocean surface LCS via a case study of the ocean surrounding the UNESCO World Heritage Ningaloo coral reef coast in Western Australia. We demonstrate that the inclusion of windage is necessary when applying LCS to the study of surface transport of any floating material in the ocean.