Baroclinic Energy Transfer in the Ocean

The role of baroclinicity, which arises from the misalignment of pressure and density gradients, is well-known in the vorticity equation, yet its role in the kinetic energy budget has never been obvious. Ref. [1] has recently shown that baroclinicity appears naturally in the kinetic energy budget after carrying out the appropriate scale decomposition. Here, we extend the coarse-graining decomposition to study this process within the shallow water model and apply it to numerical simulations as well as satellite data. [1] A. Lees and H. Aluie, Fluids 4, 92 (2019).