Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

The control of mixing in shallow water basins and deep oceans represents a step in advance for climate models. Several phenomena are considered as turbulence generators, effective for diapycnal transport of chemicals, salt, heat: internal tides and currents, amongst the most accredited. However, in the continental shelf the mixing due to infragravity waves partially reflected by the coast has been almost completely neglected. Long waves are subject to high reflection, combine with their reflected counterpart inducing Reynolds wave stresses, and exert their effects on the entire water column. The ubiquitous presence of infragravity waves and the huge extension of the coastlines suggest that this effect is potentially relevant on a global scale. We aim to quantify the effect of mixing due to reflected long waves in the continental shelf area, also on the basis of recent experiments on the efficiency of turbulence in transferring salt between two layers with different salinity.