Turbulent Diffusivity Profiles on the Shelf and Slope at the Southern Edge of the Canada Basin

Author:

Yee Ruby1ORCID,Musgrave Ruth12ORCID,Fine Elizabeth3ORCID,Nash Jonathan4ORCID,St. Laurent Louis5,Pickart Robert2ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Dalhousie University Department of Oceanography Halifax NS Canada

2. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Falmouth MA USA

3. Scripps Institution of Oceanography La Jolla CA USA

4. College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences Oregon State University Corvallis OR USA

5. University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory Seattle WA USA

Abstract

AbstractVertical profiles of temperature microstructure at 95 stations were obtained over the Beaufort shelf and shelfbreak in the southern Canada Basin during a November 2018 research cruise. Two methods for estimating the dissipation rates of temperature variance and turbulent kinetic energy were compared using this data set. Both methods require fitting a theoretical spectrum to observed temperature gradient spectra, but differ in their assumptions. The two methods agree for calculations of the dissipation rate of temperature variance, but not for that of turbulent kinetic energy. After applying a rigorous data rejection framework, estimates of turbulent diffusivity and heat flux are made across different depth ranges. The turbulent diffusivity of temperature is typically enhanced by about one order of magnitude in profiles on the shelf compared to near the shelfbreak, and similarly near the shelfbreak compared to profiles with bottom depth >1,000 m. Depth bin means are shown to vary depending on the averaging method (geometric means tend to be smaller than arithmetic means and maximum likelihood estimates). The statistical distributions of heat flux within the surface, cold halocline, and Atlantic water layer change with depth. Heat fluxes are typically <1 Wm−2, but are greater than 50 Wm−2 in ∼8% of the overall data. These largest fluxes are located almost exclusively within the surface layer, where temperature gradients can be large.

Publisher

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

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