Open AccessGlobal distribution of the decay timescale of mixed layer inertial motions observed by satellite‐tracked drifters
Author(s) -
Park Jong Jin,
Kim Kuh,
Schmitt Raymond W.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: oceans
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/2008jc005216
Subject(s) - zonal and meridional , drifter , geology , mixed layer , satellite , neutral buoyancy , amplitude , buoyancy , climatology , geophysics , atmospheric sciences , oceanography , physics , lagrangian , mechanics , astronomy , quantum mechanics , mathematical physics
The decay timescale of mixed layer inertial amplitudes has been estimated from satellite tracked drifter trajectories from 1990 to 2004 as the e‐folding timescale of the temporal correlation functions. The decay timescales increase with latitude in all basins except the North Atlantic. A beta dispersion model shows that dephasing leads to meridional variations of the decay timescale in the North Pacific and the Southern Ocean, but meridional variations of the buoyancy structure in the North Atlantic act to compensate the beta effect, leading to a lack of meridional variation of the decay timescale in that ocean.