The general circulation of the ocean is strongly constrained by the pathways that kinetic and available potential energy take from the basin-scale forces that inject them to centimeter scales, where they are depleted. To determine the ocean's response to future climate scenarios, these energy pathways, from forcing to dissipation, must be understood and quantified.Mesoscale eddies, with horizontal scales on the order of 100 km and timescales longer than many days, are well known as the dominant reservoir of kinetic energy (KE) in the oceans (Wunsch & Ferrari, 2004). But because their dynamics are constrained by an approximate geostrophic and hydrostatic force balance, they are characterized by an inverse KE cascade, and by themselves do not provide the necessary forward scale-transfer to dissipation (Müller et al., 2005). Possible mechanisms to interrupt the mesoscale inverse cascade include interaction with the bottom topography and boundary layer (
Eddy‐resolving ocean models suggest that the transport of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) may be insensitive to increasing wind. This insensitivity is due to eddies that flatten the isopycnals and compensate for their wind‐driven steepening. However, the eddy‐resolving models do not accurately represent the eddy dissipation processes that occur at scales smaller than the model resolution, including lee wave generation at rough topography. Using a lee wave parameterization in an idealized model of the Southern Ocean, we show that the ACC transport becomes more sensitive to wind when the lee wave drag is included. The sensitivity arises from the dependence of the lee wave drag on the bottom stratification. When the bottom stratification increases in response to wind, it increases the lee wave generation, and hence the eddy dissipation, at rough topography. As a result, the ACC shear (baroclinic transport) increases to drive stronger eddy generation to compensate.
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