Oceanic Isopycnal Mixing by Coordinate Rotation

Abstract

Current numerical models of oceanic circulation differentiate between the eddy diffusion and viscosity transport along the geopotential horizontal and vertical directions only. In order to model the effect of anisotropic turbulence as diffusive transport along and across density surfaces, the isopycnal mixing tensor has been transformed from a diagonal second-rank tensor in the isopycnal coordinate system to a tensor containing off-diagonal elements in the geopotential coordinate system.