TRR 181 seminar - Tobias Kukulka: "Tidal influence on Langmuir circulation in a coastal ocean"

The TRR 181 seminar is held by Tobias Kukulka (University of Delaware) on

Tidal influence on Langmuir circulation in a coastal ocean

at Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde on June 28 at 10 am, Seestraße 15, Vortragssaal, 1. Stock. 

*Abstract*

Langmuir circulation (LC) is a turbulent process driven by wind and surface waves that plays a key role in transferring momentum, heat, and mass in the ocean surface boundary layer. On the coastal shelves the largest‐scale LC span the whole water column and thus couple the surface and bottom boundary layers and enhance turbulent mixing. Observations and large eddy simulations of a coastal ocean demonstrate that these relatively large scale Langmuir cells are strongly influenced by crosswind tidal currents. Two mechanisms by which crosswind tidal shear may distort and disrupt Langmuir cells are proposed. Our results imply that scaling of LC characteristics in a coastal ocean differs from that in the open ocean, which has important practical implications for parameterizing enhanced mixing due to LC.