Energy Partition between Submesoscale Internal Waves and Quasigeostrophic Vortical Motion in the Pycnocline

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Abstract Shipboard ADCP velocity and towed CTD chain density measurements from the eastern North Pacific pycnocline are used to segregate energy between linear internal waves (IW) and linear vortical motion [quasigeostrophy (QG)] in 2D wavenumber space spanning submesoscale horizontal wavelengths λx ∼ 1–50 km and finescale vertical wavelengths λz ∼ 7–100 m. Helmholtz decomposition and a new Burger number (Bu) decomposition yield similar results despite different methodologies. While these wavelengths are conventionally attributed to internal waves, both QG and IW contribute significantly at all measured scales. Partition between IW and QG total energies depends on Bu. For Bu < 0.01, available potential energy EP exceeds horizontal kinetic energy EK and is contributed mostly by QG. In contrast, energy is nearly equipartitioned between QG and IW for Bu ≫ 1. For Bu < 2, EK is contributed mainly by IW, and EP by QG, while, for Bu > 2, contributions are reversed. Finescale near-inertial IW dominate vertical shear variance, implying negligible QG contribution to vertical shear instability. In contrast, both QG and IW at the smallest λx ∼ 1 km contribute large horizontal shear variance, so that both may lead to horizontal shear instability, while QG, with its longer time scales, likely dominates isopycnal stirring. Both QG and IW contribute to vortex stretching at small vertical scales. For QG, the relative vorticity contribution to linear potential vorticity anomaly increases with decreasing horizontal and increasing vertical scales.

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