Submesoscale eddy mixing in coastal and shelf seas (Thesis)

Kamidaira, Yuki   

Japan has vast marine environment. Therefore, the marine environmental assessment to grasp oceanic structure of shelf and coastal area in the vicinity is important from various viewpoints, such as marine and seafloor resources, national defense, and disaster prevention for Japan. For instance, preserving the coral coasts around the Ryukyu Islands, and assessing marine pollution due the raidionuclides released form the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant are urgent matters for Japan. In the present study, submesoscale-eddy-resolving numerical experiments using Regional Oceanic Modeling System (ROMS) were conducted for areas around the Ryukyu Islands and the northeast Pacific coast of Japan to investigate the applicability of the high-resolution model to the marine assessment system. In addition, we considered improving the Short-Term Emergency Assessment system of Marine Environmental Radioactivity (STEAMER) to reproduce more realistic oceanic dispersal of radionuclide by introducing multiple-nested downscaling ocean modeling system using the ROMS. Extensive model-data comparison demonstrated that the submsoscale eddy-resolving models, with a lateral grid resolution of 1km, could successfully reproduce the synoptic and mesoscale oceanic structures. According to the eddy heat flux analysis and energy conversion analysis relevant to the eddy-generation mechanisms revealed that both of shear instability and baroclinic instability enhanced the three-dimensional mixing of tracers induced by submesoscale eddy. These results suggested that the multiple-nested, high resolution, downscaling ocean modeling has important role to develop the accurate marine environmental assessment system.