Ocean submesoscales, flows with characteristic size around 10m-10km, are transitional between the larger, rotationally-constrained mesoscale and three-dimensional turbulence. I present simulations of a submesoscale ocean filament where instability dominates early behavior and induces a near-inertial wave response that strengthens frontal gradients at the surface. I will outline the consequences of these oscillations for surface frontogenesis, with a particular focus on how unstable initial conditions in computational studies may risk drawing conclusions that may not be generalisable to the real ocean. I will also present a hypothesis on the connection of this rapid response to known behaviour of flows unstable to symmetric instability, before introducing initial results of a spin-up simulation that attempts to solve these issues.
Near-inertial echoes of ageostrophic instability in submesoscale filaments
Host: Eylon Vakrat