Wave breaking in dense plumes

Sinking dense plumes are important in many oceanographic settings, notably the polar formation of deep and bottom waters. The dense water sources feeding such plumes are commonly affected by tidal modulation, leading to plume variability on short time scales. In a simple unsteady theory of one-dimensional plumes (based on conservation equations for volume, momentum, and buoyancy), this plume variability is manifested as waves that travel down the resulting current. Using numerical techniques applied to the hyperbolic conservation equations, this study investigates the novel concept that these waves may break as they travel down the plumes, triggering intense local mixing between the dense fluid and surrounding ocean. The results demonstrate that the waves break at geophysically relevant distances from the plume source. The location of wave breaking is very sensitive to plume drag from the seabed, the properties of the dense source, and the amplitude and period of the source modulation. To the extent that the simple model represents the real world, these results suggest that wave breaking originating from the tidal modulation of dense plumes could lead to a strong and previously unexplored source of local deep-ocean mixing.

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