Six years of deep ocean infragravity wave measurements on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 37°N
Abstract
Ocean infragravity waves are an important part of the deep ocean climate, can be used to measure subsurface elastic properties, and may contribute to the earth's background seismic noise. They are surface gravity waves with periods from 10s of seconds to 10s of minutes and are generated by non-linear wave-wave interactions, with the strongest infragravity waves believed to be generated by storms near coastlines. The first deep ocean observations of infragravity waves suggested that they were much stronger and more constant in the Pacific Ocean than in the North Atlantic Ocean, presumably because the Pacific Ocean has direct wavepaths to more coastline and, in particular, high-latitude coastlines in both the Northern and Southern Oceans [Webb et al., 1991]. However, a recent study of deep ocean infragravity waves, using data from tsunami buoys at a large number of sites in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, suggests that infragravity wave energy is much more variable in the Pacific Ocean, and stronger in the Atlantic Ocean, than was assumed [Aucan & Ardhuin, 2013]. We measured seafloor pressure continuously for six years at a deep ocean site using both differential and absolute pressure gauges. We describe the levels and variability of infragravity wave energy and their correlation with coastal storms. We relate the energy observed at Atlantic and Pacific ocean tsunami gauges to the sensitivity of each site to waves from surrounding coastlines, calculated using a tsunami modeling code. We compare the sensitivity of tsunami buoys and differential pressure gauges to deep ocean infragravity waves.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AGUFMOS51B1663C
- Keywords:
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- 4277 OCEANOGRAPHY: GENERAL Time series experiments;
- 7255 SEISMOLOGY Surface waves and free oscillations