Rapid topographic scatter of near-inertial waves generated by storms

Abstract

Internal waves propagate on the ocean's stratification, carrying energy and redistributing momentum through the ocean. When internal waves break, they contribute to diapycnal mixing in the ocean interior, but this breaking behaviour depends upon the scale of the waves. Low-mode internal waves have larger horizontal and vertical scales, and thus break less readily than higher-mode waves. The scattering of internal waves by topography is an important mechanism in transferring internal wave energy to smaller scales that are more conducive to wave breaking and mixing processes. In this study, we propose and investigate a mechanism in which storm-generated low-mode internal waves scatter at topography. We hypothesise that horizontally propagating internal wave modes generated by strong winds (i.e., due to a storm) can rapidly dephase; these dephased waves can then be scattered from topography, resulting in higher-mode upward-propagating waves within hours of the passage of a storm. We investigate this phenomenon in an idealised numerical model of a storm passing over a prominent ridge. Bottom-scattered near-inertial internal waves propagate away from the ridge rapidly in the wake of the storm. We perform several perturbation experiments varying the properties of the ocean, the winds and the topography. The bottom-scattered waves exhibit spatial downscaling, and have an energy flux equivalent to 10% the magnitude of the energy flux from surface-generated near-inertial waves in our domain. Although small in a globally averaged sense, we argue that the topographic scatter of storm-generated near-inertial waves could account for the unexplained near-inertial wave signals found in ocean observations and numerical studies.