Global Internal Waves

Motivation

Internal waves are vertical disturbances in the ocean’s density layers with amplitudes of 10-100 meters and wavelengths of 10-100 kilometers. They are generated when the tides move over underwater ridges or by the winds. The generation, propagation, and dissipation of internal waves is relevant for:

predicting coastal processes,
detiding of satellite altimetry measurements of sea-surface height,
ocean acoustics, and
water-mass mixing, which crucially impacts ocean circulation and ultimately the Earth’s climate

A new step forward in the predictability of global internal wave propagation

Our Approach

We will use arrays of field instrumentation (fixed and drifting assets), remote sensing and high-resolution modeling to understand how internal waves propagate in the global ocean

Goals

Our goals are to understand the generation, propagation, and dissipation mechanisms for oceanic internal gravity waves to enable seamless, skillful modeling & forecasts of these internal waves between the deep ocean and the shore.

Predictability of internal tides

Internal tides approaching the continental slope are unpredictable. Our goal is to improve that predictability using a combination of high-resolution observations, remote sensing and high resolution models. Advanced understanding of key processes in modifying and changing the nature of these propagating internal waves is a key focus of this work.

Specifically:

Observations are designed & conducted to cover vast ranges and oceanic regimes,
Field campaigns are organized to take advantage of coincident global observational programs (NASA SWOT mission, GO-SHIP)
High-resolution models are run to track all components (stationary and non-stationary) of internal tides
Simulations of extreme storm events will generate and track internal wave energy

IWR array mooring and CPIESs successfully recovered

In October 2024, the internal-wave resolving (IWR) array mooring team set out on another voyage to recover field instruments, including…

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Spring SQUID deployments across ocean basins

EM-APEX profiling floats measuring temperature, salinity, horizontal currents, and turbulence are continuing to be deployed into the global Sampling QUantitative…

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Internal tide energy fluxes from real-time HYCOM simulations

The IWR HYCOM Team uses real-time realistically forced global ocean HYCOM simulations with Data Assimilation (DA) to compute semidiurnal-band monthly-mean…