Investigation of internal wave amplitude estimates through phase-space ray-tracing

An effective way to track the propagation and refraction of internal waves is by applying the ray, or WKBJ, approximation and performing numerical ray-tracing. Wave amplitudes are easily obtained in a phase-space formulation of the ray-tracing, which also avoids the caustics that are typically present in both the spatial and spectral formulations. However, the resulting phase-space solution must be projected onto the spatial and spectral domains to obtain solutions in those domains. Initial estimates are made to asses the accuracy of these projections using a simple background that varies in one spatial dimension and time. Implications for the short oceanic internal waves, and for cases of higher dimensions, are discussed.