Salt - Fingering in Shear

Salt - Fingering Theory

Eric Kunze also sought to explain shadowgraph images (Fig. 5; Kunze et al. DSR 1987) which showed more nearly horizontal than vertical striations, arguing that these were the result of near-inertial shear tilting over the fingers (Fig. 6; Kunze JMR 1990).

Fig. 5: Shadowgraph image in a fingering-favorable region east of Barbados. The shadowgraph measures the Laplacian of index of refraction (temperature).

Fig. 6: Schematic illustrating the tilting of salt fingers by rotating near-inertial shear.Eric Kunze also argued that internal wave shear should modify the breaking of salt fingers (Kunze JMR 1994) but recent analysis of fine- and microstructure data has disproven this hypothesis (Inoue et al. JMR 2008).

Back