The scope of the project is to investigate the properties of internal waves in the ocean from a basic mathematical and novel numerical perspective. They are additionally, and importantly, influenced by the Earth's rotation.
Internal waves are ubiquitous in the interior of the oceans.
More than thirty years of accumulated measurements, at many different locations in all seasons, have shown that the observed short-term variations of temperature and salinity can to a large extent be explained by such internal wave motions. The observed uniformity must of course involve dissipation of energy. It is widely believed that such dissipation occurs through internal wave breaking at short wavelengths. This project will take a fresh look at this difficult problem area by combining recently made significant advances in numerical and theoretical model-building. On the numerical side the CASL algorithm, a highly specialised novel numerical technique based in part on an instructive reformulation of the equations of motion, will be used for simulating both wavelike and vortical parts of the motion with very great accuracy.