Zoi Kourkouraidou

Internal tides are internal gravity waves in the ocean generated when tides flow over rough underwater topography. They carry a large part of the energy of the internal wavefield, which can be available for diapycnal mixing. In particular the scattering of internal tides from low to high modes by interactions with mesoscale eddies is thought to be one of the processes causing energy dissipation and diapycnal mixing in the open ocean. The higher modes have smaller horizontal structures and higher velocity shear, which makes them prone to breaking, which in turn causes diapycnal mixing.

Studies using idealized models or sparse ship-based observational data indicate the existence of higher internal tide modes inside eddies caused by scattering. However, to our knowlegde, no such study exists using a three-dimensional state-of-the-art global circulation model, leaving a gap on a more realistic and global understanding of such interactions. One of the reasons is the lack of high horizontal resolution models in the last decades, which is crucially needed in order to resolve the high internal tide modes.

I am using the high-frequency output of the uncoupled global circulation model ICON-O at a horizontal resolution of 5km to investigate these interactions.

Supervision: Prof. Dr. Jin-Song von Storch, Dr. Manita Chouksey
(project is part of CRC181 "Energy transfers in atmosphere and ocean" and funded by the DFG)