High-resolution modeling study demonstrates that eddy-induced diapycnal fluxes balance Ekman pumping across simulated ocean circulations, highlighting their key role in thermocline maintenance.
High-resolution numerical experiments are diagnosed to study the integral effects of geostrophic eddy fluxes on the large-scale ocean circulation. Three characteristic large-scale flows are considered: 1) an anticyclonic single gyre, 2) a double gyre, and 3) an unblocked zonal flow, a simple analog of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. It is found that buoyancy and potential vorticity budgets in the presence of eddies are dominated by a balance between vertical advection into the control volume by Ekman pumping and eddy transfer across the density surfaces achieved by diapycnal eddy fluxes, with small-scale mixing making only a minor contribution. Possible oceanographic implications of the results are discussed.
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Radko et al. (2004) studied this question.
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