Fig. 2: The generation, propagation, and dissipation of near-inertial kinetic energy.
From: Oceanic eddies induce a rapid formation of an internal wave continuum
a The wind work cospectrum in the eddy-only, eddy-wave, and wave-only cases. The frequency band over which the near-inertial wind work, near-inertial kinetic energy, and near-inertial vertical energy flux are computed is defined between 12 h and 24 h, which are marked by blue dotted lines. The Hövmoller diagram of (b) near-inertial kinetic energy and (c) vertical energy flux in the eddy-wave case, respectively. The negative vertical energy flux indicates downward energy propagation. The Hövmoller diagram of horizontally averaged super-inertial energy dissipation (log scale) in the (d) eddy-only, (e) eddy-wave, and (f) wave-only cases, respectively (Methods). As in Fig. 1, gray colors in (d–f) indicate weak negative dissipation values that result from under-sampling of parameterized viscosity values (Methods and Supplementary Note 7). Solid lines in (b–f) show the horizontally and temporally averaged stratification profiles with an x-axis ranges from 0 to 0.005 s−1. The quantities shown are obtained from the 2 km simulations. See Supplementary Fig. 4 for the same figure for the 500 m simulations.
