Diagnosis of Air-sea interactions via Turbulent Interaction Diagrams of Temperature Variance

Spectral methods have long been an integral part of turbulence theory. Traditionally, spatial-spectral transfers have been used to understand how kinetic energy density varies at different spatial scales. Similar methods have been devised to understand how the density of kinetic energy or other quantities varies at different time scales. Here, we discuss the development of turbulent interaction diagrams, introduced in Skitka et. al. 2024¹, which allow one to quantify the exchange of a spectral density between two different time scales. More explicitly, while spectral transfers allow one to calculate a spectral density at one time scale, diagrams allow one to identify how spectral density is transferred from a “source” time scale to a “destination” time scale. In particular, we discuss our plans to study the exchange of temperature variance between different time scales at the ocean-atmosphere interface. We show theoretical results that explain how turbulent interaction diagrams of temperature variance will allow us to circumvent the limitations of previous studies of temperature variance at the ocean-atmosphere interface, which relied on traditional spectral transfers and were limited to relatively simple simulations. Furthermore, we show how we plan to use diagrams to study temperature variance in high-resolution coupled climate simulations and even data. Finally, we discuss strategies for using diagrams to determine the effects of ocean submesoscale dynamics on the weather and climate.



1. Skitka et. al. Probing the Nonlinear Interactions of Supertidal Internal Waves Using a High-Resolution Regional Ocean Model. JPO, 54, 399–425.

2. Mondal, Morten et. al. Spatio-temporal spectral transfers in fluid dynamics. Under review. arXiv:2405.02259v2