Particle dispersion and clustering in surface ocean turbulence with ageostrophic dynamics

Abstract

Upper-ocean turbulent flows at horizontal length scales smaller than the deformation radius depart from geostrophic equilibrium and develop important vertical velocities, which are key to marine ecology and climatic processes. Due to their small size and fast temporal evolution, these fine scales are difficult to measure during oceanographic campaigns. Instruments such as Lagrangian drifters have provided another way to characterize these scales through the analysis of pair-dispersion evolution and have pointed out striking particle convergence events. By means of numerical simulations, we investigate such processes in a model of surface-ocean turbulence that includes ageostrophic motions. This model originates from a Rossby-number expansion of the primitive equations and reduces to the surface quasi-geostrophic model, a paradigm of submesoscale dynamics, in the limit of vanishing Rossby number. We focus on the effect of the ageostrophic dynamics on the pair-dispersion and clustering properties of Lagrangian tracer particles at the ocean surface. Our results indicate that while over long times the pair separation process is barely affected by the ageostrophic component of the velocity field, the latter is responsible for the formation of temporary particle aggregates, and the intensity of this phenomenon increases with the Rossby number. We further show that Lagrangian tracers preferentially accumulate in cyclonic frontal regions, which is in agreement with observations and other more realistic modeling studies. These findings appear interesting to improve the understanding of the turbulent transport by ocean fine scales and in light of upcoming, new high-resolution satellite data of surface velocity fields.