Assessing the State of the Art of Ocean Internal Wave Research: Is There an Internal Wave Continuum in the Ocean? Seattle, Washington, 3–4 October 2008

Abstract

Heavily studied in the 1970s and 1980s in part for their relevance to submarine detection and acoustic propagation, internal gravity waves are now of central interest in the physical oceanographic community for their role in global ocean energy cycles and mixing the oceans at great and shallow depths. Though the small time and space scales of internal waves may forever prevent their explicit resolution in global circulation models, their effects must be properly parameterized for reliable predictions of key quantities such as meridional heat transport.