Cabbeling as a catalyst and driver of turbulent mixing

Abstract

At constant pressure, a mixture of water parcels with equal density but differing salinity and temperature will be denser than the parent water parcels. This is known as cabbeling and is a consequence of the nonlinear equation of state for seawater density. With a source of turbulent vertical mixing, cabbeling has the potential to trigger and drive convection in gravitationally stable water columns and there is observational evidence that this process shapes the thermohaline structure of high-latitude oceans. However, the evolution and maintenance of turbulent mixing due to cabbeling has not been fully explored. Here, we use turbulence-resolving direct numerical simulations to investigate ca..