Does the Potential Vorticity Distribution Constrain the Spreading of Floats in the North Atlantic?

Abstract

Float trajectories are compared with the distribution of climatological potential vorticity, Q, on approximate isentropic surfaces for intermediate waters in the North Atlantic. The time-mean displacement and eddy dispersion are calculated for clusters of floats in terms of their movement along and across Q contours. For float clusters with significant mean velocities, the mean flow crosses Q contours at an angle of typically less than 208‐308 in magnitude in the ocean interior. The implied Peclet number in the ocean interior ranges from 1 to 19 with a weighted-mean value of 4.4. This mean Peclet number suggests that there is significant eddy mixing in the ocean interior: tracers should only be quasi-conserved along mean streamlines over a subbasin scale, rather than over an entire basin. The mean flow also strongly crosses Q contours near the western boundary in the Tropics, where the implied Peclet number is 0.7; this value may be a lower bound as Q contours are assumed to be zonal and relative vorticity is ignored. Float clusters with a lifetime greater than 200 days show anisotropic dispersion with greater dispersion along Q contours, than across them; float clusters with shorter lifetimes are ambiguous. This anisotropic dispersion along Q contours cannot generally be distinguished from enhanced dispersion along latitude circles since Q contours are generally zonal for these cases. However, for the null case of uniform Q for the Gulf Stream at 2000 m, there is strong isotropic dispersion, rather than enhanced zonal dispersion. In summary, diagnostics suggest that floats preferentially spread along Q contours over a subbasin scale and imply that passive tracers should likewise preferentially spread along Q contours in the ocean interior.