Chaotic stirring by a mesoscale surface-ocean flow.

The horizontal stirring properties of the flow in a region of the East Australian Current are calculated. A surface velocity field derived from remotely sensed data, using the maximum cross correlation method, is integrated to derive the distribution of the finite-time Lyapunov exponents. For the region studied (between latitudes 36 degrees S and 41 degrees S and longitudes 150 degrees E and 156 degrees E) the mean Lyapunov exponent during 1997 is estimated to be lambda( infinity )=4x10(-7) s(-1). This is in close agreement with the few other measurements of stirring rates in the surface ocean which are available. Recent theoretical results on the multifractal spectra of advected reactive tracers are applied to an analysis of a sea-surface temperature image of the study region. The spatial pattern seen in the image compares well with the pattern seen in an advected tracer with a first-order response to changes in surface forcing. The response timescale is estimated to be 20 days. (c) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

• Publication year

  2002

• Venue

  Chaos

• Publication date

  2002-04-10

• Fields of study

  Geology, Medicine, Physics, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1063/1.1481615arXiv nlin/0204011PMID 12779567
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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