Mesoscale to Submesoscale Transition in the California Current System. Part II: Frontal Processes

Abstract

This is the second of three papers investigating the regime transition that occurs in numerical simulations for an idealized, equilibrium, subtropical, eastern boundary, upwelling current system similar to the California Current. The emergent upper-ocean submesoscale fronts are analyzed from phenomenological and dynamical perspectives, using a combination of composite averaging and separation of distinctive subregions of the flow. The initiating dynamical process for the transition is near-surface frontogenesis. The frontal behavior is similar to both observed meteorological surface fronts and solutions of the approximate dynamical model called surface dynamics (i.e., uniform interior potential vorticity q and diagnostic force balance) in the intensification of surface density gradients and secondary circulations in response to a mesoscale strain field. However, there are significant behavioral differences compared to the surface-dynamics model. Wind stress acts on fronts through nonlinear Ekman transport and creation and destruction of potential vorticity. The strain-induced frontogenesis is disrupted by vigorous submesoscale frontal instabilities that in turn lead to secondary frontogenesis events, submesoscale vortices, and excitation of even smaller-scale flows. Intermittent, submesoscale breakdown of geostrophic and gradient-wind force balance occurs during the intense frontogenesis and frontal-instability events.