Influence of Stokes Drift Decay Scale on Langmuir Turbulence

Accurately scaling Langmuir turbulence (LT) in the ocean surface boundary layer (OSBL) is critical for improving ocean, weather, and climate models. The physical processes by which the structure of LT depends on surface waves’ Stokes drift decay length scale are examined. An idealized model for OSBL turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) provides a conceptual framework with three physical processes: TKE transport, dissipation, and production by the Craik–Leibovich (CL) vortex force (VF) associated with the Stokes drift shear. TKE profiles depend on OSBL depth h , surface roughness length z 0 , and wavenumber k through the nondimensional parameters kh and kz 0 . These parameters determine the rate and length scale for the dissipation of TKE produced by the CL-VF. For kz 0 ≫ 1, TKE input by the CL-VF is governed by a surface flux with TKE rapidly decaying with depth. Only for kz 0 < 1 can TKE penetrate deeper into the OSBL, with the TKE penetration depth controlled by kh . Turbulence-resolving large-eddy simulation results support this conceptual framework and indicate that the dominant Langmuir cell size scales with ( kh ) −1 . Within the depth of dominant Langmuir cells, TKE dissipation is approximately balanced by CL-VF production. Shorter waves contribute less to deeper vertical velocity variance 〈 w 2 〉 because the CL-VF is less effective in generating larger-scale LT. Depth-averaged 〈 w 2 〉 scales with a modified Langmuir number La ϕ = ( u * / u sϕ ) 1/2 , where u * denotes the water-side surface friction velocity and u sϕ is a depth-integrated weighted Stokes drift shear or, equivalently, a spectrally filtered surface Stokes drift.