The Effects of Near Inertial Waves on Ocean Heat Content and Transport

Abstract

Previous work on the effects of tropical cyclones and near-inertial waves on the ocean and climate has mainly focused on the impacts of increasing diffusivity within the oceanic mixed layer. In this thesis, we show that near inertial waves generated both by tropical cyclones and midlatitude storms constitute an import source of turbulent kinetic energy and diffusivity even in and below the oceanic thermocline, and lead to large scale re- arrangements in heat content between different ocean basins and hemispheres. We also show that near-inertial wave energy is able to penetrate the deep ocean, requiring future studies to consider the impacts of these waves on much longer timescales than a few decades. This work is accomplished using IDEMIX, a novel parameterisation for internal waves developed at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, and the XPP configuration of the ICON model.