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Time-Variable Refraction of the Internal Tide at the Hawaiian Ridge

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Title Time-Variable Refraction of the Internal Tide at the Hawaiian Ridge
Names Zaron, Edward D. (creator)
Egbert, Gary D. (creator)
Date Issued 2014-02 (iso8601)
Note This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the American Meteorological Society and can be found at: http://journals.ametsoc.org/loi/phoc.
Abstract The interaction of the dominant semidiurnal M₂ internal tide with the large-scale subtidal flow is examined
in an ocean model by propagating the tide through an ensemble of background fields in a domain centered on
the Hawaiian Ridge. The background fields are taken from the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation (SODA) ocean
analysis, at 2-month intervals from 1992 through 2001. Tides are computed with the Primitive Equation
Z-coordinate Harmonic Analysis of Tides (PEZ-HAT) model by 14-day integrations using SODA initial
conditions and M₂ tidal forcing. Variability of the tide is found to occur primarily as the result of propagation
through the nonstationary background fields, rather than via generation site variability. Generation
of incoherent tidal variability is mapped and shown to occur mostly in association with waves generated
at French Frigate Shoals scattering near the Musicians Seamounts to the north of the ridge. The phase-coherent
internal tide loses energy at a domain-average rate of 2mWm⁻² by scattering into the non-stationary
tide. Because of the interference of waves from multiple generation sites, variability of the
internal tide is spatially inhomogeneous and values of the scattering rate 10 times larger occur in localized
areas. It is estimated that 20% of the baroclinic tidal energy flux is lost by adiabatic scattering (refraction)
within 250 km of the ridge, a value regarded as a lower bound because of the smoothed nature of the SODA
fields used in this study.
Genre Article
Identifier Zaron, Edward D., Gary D. Egbert, 2014: Time-Variable Refraction of the Internal Tide at the Hawaiian Ridge. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 44, 538–557. doi:10.1175/JPO-D-12-0238.1

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