Dispersion of tracers by the oceanic eddy field modelling programme

A numerical model has been developed to study the dispersion of tracers by the oceanic eddy field. The present study is designed to study the dispersion of particles in a mesoscale eddy field produced by the numerical model. Dispersion rates are calculated for flows above three types of topography, a flat bottom, a random collection of hills and a ridge. The presence of topography is found to significantly affect the flow. The effective diffusion coefficient of the flow near the bottom is reduced by 20% for the random topography and 60% for the ridge from that for the flat bottom case. Estimates are given of the number of float years required to obtain a given accuracy for the diffusion coefficient. At the surface a modest number of floats (order 5) are required to obtain a 50% accuracy. However at the bottom, to be within a factor of 2 of the true value for the flows considered requires respectively 26, 42 and 103 float years for the flat, random and ridge cases. (author)