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Cabbeling as a catalyst and driver of turbulent mixing
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Cabbeling as a catalyst and driver of turbulent mixing
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Journal Article
Cabbeling as a catalyst and driver of turbulent mixing
2025
Overview
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 cabbeling’s impact on vertical mixing and pathways of energy in closed systems. We find that cabbeling can sustain convection in an initially gravitationally stable two-layer configuration where relatively cold/fresh water sits atop warm/salty water. We show the mixture of the cold/fresh and warm/salty water is constrained by a density maximum and that cabbeling enhances mixing rates by four orders of magnitude. Cabbeling’s effect is amplified as the static stability limit is approached, leading to convection being sustained for longer. We find that available potential energy, which is classically thought to only decrease with mixing, can increase with mixing due to cabbeling’s densification of the mixed water. Our direct numerical dimulations support the notion that cabbeling could be a source of enhanced ocean mixing and that conventional definitions of energetic pathways may need to be reconsidered to take into account densification under mixing.
