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Potential Vorticity Dynamics
Thomas Rossby, Mark Prater, Henrik Søiland
University of Rhode Island
trossby@gso.uri.edu(Abstract received 05/09/2005 for session A)
ABSTRACT
It is just over 50 years ago that John Swallow wrote his first paper on the neutrally buoyant float. Since then floats have been used to explore and address an ever-widening range of phenomena, from simple descriptive questions about flow patterns to inferences about the underlying dynamics. In this talk we first give a brief review of how different flow patterns can be clarified and understood in terms of conservation of potential vorticity (PV): planetary wave motion, flows in fronts and flows in relation to topography. But PV is not always conserved: there exist locations where it must be modified, and presumably does so through locally enhanced dissipation. For example, the flow of buoyancy-driven water from the northeast Atlantic into the Norwegian Sea between Iceland and the Faroes almost certainly demands a substantial change in PV to clear the sharply shoaling ridge that separates the two basins. Knowing that Lagrangian methods can be quite effective at interpreting flow dynamics, we outline some conceptual field programs that might help us to better understand processes that can set and modify PV in the ocean interior.
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2005 LAPCOD Meeting, Lerici, Italy, June 13-17, 2005