Oceanic Island Wake Flows in the Laboratory

This chapter presents the most recent laboratory and theoretical results on the various dynamical regimes which control an idealized oceanic Karman wake at the mesoscale and submesoscale. In order to classify the various dynamical regimes of the idealized island wake, we first need to identify the main dimensionless parameters which control the flow. We should recognize that due to strong experimental constraints the laboratory experiments are always highly simplified in comparison with oceanic island flows. The values of the main dimensionless numbers obtained in the laboratory should be comparable to the oceanic ones. Either cyclonic or anticyclonic eddies may become predominant in the oceanic wake. These asymmetries are due to the intrinsic dynamic properties of the flow and are mainly controlled by three dimensionless numbers: the island Rossby number, the Burger number, and the Ekman number.