Shear current effects on radially propagating internal waves

This talk will report on simulations of radially propagating internal waves in the presence of a shear current. We will demonstrate that as the strength of the background current increases, a substantial region of anomalously high kinetic energy occurs near the plane aligned with the background current. The kinetic energy in this region can surpass that induced by the radially propagating waves. Substantial density overturns are also observed to be associated with this region. For strong enough shear, the radial symmetry of the wave front is completely broken and the anomalous kinetic energy region is observed to have a dominant component below the perturbed pycnocline. The region of anomalous kinetic energy spreads out from the plane of the background current and is, to the best of our knowledge, a completely novel phenomenon Time permitting, these results will be contrasted with classical critical layer theory.