A Diagnosis of Anisotropic Eddy Diffusion From a High‐Resolution Global Ocean Model

Abstract

Abstract Oceanic mesoscale eddies are known to diffuse and stir tracers, and the development of skillful eddy closures is aided considerably by the accurate diagnosis of these processes from eddy‐resolving model statistics. In this work a multiple‐tracers inversion method is applied to a global mesoscale eddy‐resolving simulation, with the intent to solve for the eddy transport tensor that describes the eddy diffusion (symmetric part) and stirring (antisymmetric part). Special emphasis is placed on diagnosing the anisotropy of the horizontal transport, which is described by the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the 2×2 horizontal symmetric subtensor. Global diagnoses of these quantities, along with an examination of their vertical structures, are used to recommend an algorithm for extending the Gent and McWilliams and Redi parameterizations to include anisotropic effects.

Keywords

• mesoscale eddies
• Gent‐McWilliams
• eddy diffusion
• anisotropic
• symmetric tensor