Island Wakes in Deep Water

Abstract

Density stratification and planetary rotation distinguish three-dimensional island wakes significantly from a classical fluid dynamical flow around an obstacle. A numerical model is used to study the formation and evolution of flow around an idealized island in deep water (i.e., with vertical island sides and surface-intensified stratification and upstream flow), focusing on wake instability, coherent vortex formation, and mesoscale and submesoscale eddy activity. In a baseline experiment with strong vorticity generation at the island, three types of instability are evident: centrifugal, barotropic, and baroclinic. Sensitivities are shown to three nondimensional parameters: the Reynolds number (Re), Rossby number (Ro), and Burger number (Bu). The dependence on Re is similar to the classical wake in its transition to turbulence, but in contrast the island wake contains coherent eddies no matter how large the Re value. When Re is large enough, the shear layer at the island is so narrow that the vertical component of vorticity is larger than the Coriolis frequency in the near wake, leading to centrifugal instability on the anticyclonic side. As Bu decreases the eddy size shrinks from the island breadth to the baroclinic deformation radius, and the eddy generation process shifts from barotropic to baroclinic instability. For small Ro values, the wake dynamics is symmetric with respect to cyclonic and anticyclonic eddies. At intermediate Ro and Bu values, the anticyclonic eddies are increasingly more robust than cyclonic ones as Ro/Bu increases, but for large Re and Ro values, centrifugal instability weakens the anticyclonic eddies while cyclonic eddies remain coherent.