Regional and Global (Internal) Tide Modelling

In my current research as Assistant Professor at the Department of Marine Science of the University of Southern Mississippi, I work with global HYCOM to study internal tide generation, propagation, and dissipation. The model is used to better understand the fate of the low mode internal tides that can propagate 1000s of km. In collaboration with the Naval Research Laboratory I have worked to improve the wave drag parameterizations. Currently I am studying the baroclinic energetics. The graph below shows the band-passed semidiurnal baroclinic energy flux magnitudes.

During a postdoc with Jim McWilliams at the department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California in Los Angeles I analyzed ROMS model data to study internal tides in the Southern California Bight. There are few observations of internal tides in the interior of the Southern California Bight. The application of the high-resolution ROMS reveals a, previously unknown, semidiurnal first-mode CW rotating Poincare wave with fluxes of 5 KW/m in the 2000-m deep Santa Cruz basin (location A in the figure below; the arrows in the basin have a different scale than outside the basin). The fluxes are strongly modulated by the spring-neap cycle. The model shows hot spots of mixing in the basin that warrant further research. Outside this deep basin the fluxes are weaker and more affected by non-tidal forces, e.g. eddies. A manuscript was published on this standing wave phenomena. In the thesis of Carmen Hill Lindsay, a master student, is a nice model-data comparison of internal tides in the bight.