Submesoscale mixing on initial dilution of radionuclides released from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

Kamidaira, Yuki   ; Uchiyama, Yusuke*; Kawamura, Hideyuki  ; Kobayashi, Takuya ; Furuno, Akiko   

We developed a submesoscale eddy-resolving oceanic dispersal modeling system consisting of a double nested oceanic downscaling model and an offline oceanic radionuclides dispersion model to investigate influences of submesoscale coherent structures (SCSs) and associated ageostrophic secondary circulations (ASCs) on the three-dimensional (3D) dispersal and initial dilution of the dissolved radioactive Cs accidentally released from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP1) occurred since March 2011. The extensive model-data comparison demonstrates that the elaborated innermost high-resolution model at a lateral grid resolution of 1 km successfully reproduces transient mesoscale oceanic structures, the Kuroshio path and stratification, and spatiotemporal variations of 3D Cs concentrations. These SCSs and ASCs occurred primarily due to shear instability with baroclinic instability as the secondary mechanism, according to energy conversion and spectral analyses. The vertical Cs flux analysis was performed with decomposition of the variables into the mean, mesoscale, and submesoscale components using frequency and wavenumber filters. The vertical Cs flux analysis explained that 84% of the FNPP1-derived Cs was transported downward below the mixed layer by eddies, with the major contributions from ASCs induced by submesoscale eddies.