Climatic Impacts of Parameterized Local and Remote Tidal Mixing

Abstract

Abstract Turbulent mixing driven by breaking internal tides plays a primary role in the meridional overturning and oceanic heat budget. Most current climate models explicitly parameterize only the local dissipation of internal tides at the generation sites, representing the remote dissipation of low-mode internal tides that propagate away through a uniform background diffusivity. In this study, a simple energetically consistent parameterization of the low-mode internal-tide dissipation is derived and implemented in the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory Earth System Model with GOLD component (GFDL-ESM2G). The impact of remote and local internal-tide dissipation on the ocean state is examined using a series of simulations with the same total amount of energy input for mixing, but with different scalings of the vertical profile of dissipation with the stratification and with different idealized scenarios for the distribution of the low-mode internal-tide energy dissipation: uniformly over ocean basins, continental slopes, or continental shelves. In these idealized scenarios, the ocean state, including the meridional overturning circulation, ocean ventilation, main thermocline thickness, and ocean heat uptake, is particularly sensitive to the vertical distribution of mixing by breaking low-mode internal tides. Less sensitivity is found to the horizontal distribution of mixing, provided that distribution is in the open ocean. Mixing on coastal shelves only impacts the large-scale circulation and water mass properties where it modifies water masses originating on shelves. More complete descriptions of the distribution of the remote part of internal-tide-driven mixing, particularly in the vertical and relative to water mass formation regions, are therefore required to fully parameterize ocean turbulent mixing.