Skip to main content

/ Data from: Modulation of Surface Gravity Waves by Internal Waves

Have a question about this item?

Item information. View source record on contributor's website.

Title
Data from: Modulation of Surface Gravity Waves by Internal Waves
Creator
Lenain, Luc
Pizzo, Nick
Date Created and/or Issued
2017-09-05 to 2017-09-17
Contributing Institution
UC San Diego, Research Data Curation Program
Collection
Observations and Model Simulations from the Inner-Shelf Dynamics Experiment (ISDE)
Rights Information
Under copyright
Constraint(s) on Use: This work is protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.). Use of this work beyond that allowed by "fair use" or any license applied to this work requires written permission of the copyright holder(s). Responsibility for obtaining permissions and any use and distribution of this work rests exclusively with the user and not the UC San Diego Library. Inquiries can be made to the UC San Diego Library program having custody of the work.
Use: This work is available from the UC San Diego Library. This digital copy of the work is intended to support research, teaching, and private study.
Rights Holder and Contact
UC Regents
Description
This collection contains the data sets needed to generate each figure presented in the publication Lenain, L., and Pizzo, N. (2021). Modulation of Surface Gravity Waves by Internal Waves. Journal of Physical Oceanography 51, 9, 2735-2748, available from: https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-20-0302.1 Internal waves are a regular feature of the open-ocean and coastal waters. As a train of internal waves propagates, their surface induced currents modulate the surface waves, generating a characteristic rough- and smooth-banded structure. While the surface expression of these internal waves is well known and has been observed from a variety of remote sensing instruments, direct quantitative observations of the directional properties of the surface gravity wave field modulated by an internal wave remain sparse. In this work, we report on a comprehensive field campaign conducted off the coast of Point Sal, California, in September 2017. Using a unique combination of airborne remote sensing observations, along with in situ surface and subsurface measurements, we investigate and quantify the interaction between surface gravity and internal wave processes. We find that surface waves are significantly modulated by the currents induced by the internal waves. Through novel observations of ocean topography, we characterize the rapid modification of the directional and spectral properties of surface waves over very short spatial scales [O(100) m or less]. Over a range of wavelengths (3–9-m waves), geometrical optics and wave action conservation predictions show good agreement with the observed wavenumber spectra in smooth and rough regions of the modulated surface waves. If a parameterization of wave action source terms is used, good agreement is found over a larger range of wavenumbers, down to 4 rad m−1. These results elucidate properties of surface waves interacting with a submesoscale ocean current and should provide insight into more general interactions between surface waves and the fine-scale structure of the upper ocean. Data were collected from an airborne instrument, the Modular Aerial Sensing System (MASS) during the ONR-sponsored Inner Shelf DRI experiment.
This research was supported by grants from the Physical Oceanography programs at ONR (Grants N00014-17-1-2171, N00014-14-1-0710, and N00014-17-1-3005) NSF (OCE; Grant OCE-1634289), and NASA (Grant 80NSSC19K1688).
Research Data Curation Program, UC San Diego, La Jolla, 92093-0175 (https://lib.ucsd.edu/rdcp)
Lenain, Luc; Pizzo, Nick (2021). Data from: Modulation of Surface Gravity Waves by Internal Waves. In Observations and Model Simulations from the Inner-Shelf Dynamics Experiment (ISDE). UC San Diego Library Digital Collections. https://doi.org/10.6075/J0513ZBJ
Language
English
Subject
Submesoscale currents
Wave-current interaction
Air-sea interaction
Waves, oceanic
Remote sensing
Internal waves
Ocean currents
Point Sal (Calif.)
Place
Point Sal (Calif.)

About the collections in Calisphere

Learn more about the collections in Calisphere. View our statement on digital primary resources.

Copyright, permissions, and use

If you're wondering about permissions and what you can do with this item, a good starting point is the "rights information" on this page. See our terms of use for more tips.

Share your story

Has Calisphere helped you advance your research, complete a project, or find something meaningful? We'd love to hear about it; please send us a message.

Explore related content on Calisphere: