Internal tides and energy fluxes over Great Meteor Seamount

• Main Authors: T. Gerkema, H. van Haren
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2007-10-01
• Series: Ocean Science
• Online Access: http://www.ocean-sci.net/3/441/2007/os-3-441-2007.pdf

Internal-tide energy fluxes are determined halfway over the southern slope of Great Meteor Seamount (Canary Basin), using data from combined CTD/LADCP yoyoing, covering the whole water column. The strongest signal is semi-diurnal and is concentrated in the upper few hundred meters of the water column. An indeterminacy in energy flux profiles is discussed; it is argued that a commonly applied condition used to determine these profiles is in fact invalid over sloping bottoms. However, the vertically integrated flux can be established unambiguously; the observed results are compared with the outcome of a numerical internal-tide generation model. For the semi-diurnal internal tide, the vertically integrated flux found in the model corresponds well to the observed one. The observed diurnal signal appears to be largely of non-tidal origin.