Single super-vortex as a proxy for ocean surface flow fields
<p>Empirical flow field data evaluation in a well-studied ocean region along the US west coast revealed a surprisingly strong relationship between the surface integrals of kinetic energy and enstrophy (squared vorticity). This relationship defines a single isolated Gaussian super-vortex, whose...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2019-07-01
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| Series: | Ocean Science |
| Online Access: | https://www.ocean-sci.net/15/941/2019/os-15-941-2019.pdf |
| Summary: | <p>Empirical flow field data evaluation in a well-studied ocean region along
the US west coast revealed a surprisingly strong
relationship between the surface integrals of kinetic energy and enstrophy (squared vorticity). This
relationship defines a single isolated Gaussian super-vortex, whose fitted size parameter
is related to the mean eddy size, and the square of the fitted height parameter is proportional to the sum of the square of all individual eddy amplitudes obtained by standard vortex census.
This finding allows very effective coarse-grained eddy statistics with minimal computational efforts. As an illustrative example, the westward
drift velocity of eddies is determined from a simple cross-correlation analysis of kinetic energy integrals.</p> |
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| ISSN: | 1812-0784 1812-0792 |