«On Clustering of Floating Tracers»
Konstantin Koshel, Dmitry Stepanov, Evgeny Ryzhov and Pavel Berloff (ТОИ ДВО РАН and Imperial College, London)
Clustering of tracers floating on the ocean surface and evolving due to combined velocity fields consisting of a regular mesoscale component and a kinematic random component representing the influence of submesoscale motions. A theory of exponential clustering in random velocity fields is applied to characterize the obtained clustering scenarios in both steady and unsteady mesoscale flows. Our results suggest that clustering of floating tracers involves complicated interplays between the evolving mesoscale and submesoscale flow components, and they have to be taken into account in the tracer modelling efforts.
