Dr Luwei Yang

I am a physical oceanographer and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Climate Fluid Physics (CFP) group at the Research School of Earth Sciences (RSES) at the Australian National University (ANU). My research focuses on understanding the impacts of small-scale ocean processes on large-scale ocean circulation. I use a combination of geophysical fluid dynamics theory, numerical modelling, and observational datasets in my research.

I obtained my PhD from the University of Tasmania in 2019. My PhD research focused on the impacts of internal lee waves on the Southern Ocean circulation. Specifically, I investigated the role of internal lee waves as an energy sink for the mesoscale eddy field and their influence on the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) and the Southern Ocean Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC). As part of this work, I developed an energetically consistent parameterisation for internal lee waves that incorporates both wave drag and wave-induced mixing. I then implemented this parameterisation in an eddy-resolving configuration of the Southern Ocean to investigate the impacts of internal lee waves on eddy energy, ACC transport, the strength of the Southern Ocean MOC, and their response to changes in Southern Ocean westerly wind stress.

Following my PhD, I joined the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a Postdoctoral Scholar. My research focused on understanding the interactions of mesoscale eddies, submesoscale currents and wind-generated internal waves in the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre region. Using high-resolution numerical simulations in ROMS, I investigated the role of eddy-wave interactions in the evolution of storm-generated near-inertial internal wave field and, more broadly, in the formation of the oceanic internal wave continuum. 

Currently, I study the impacts of internal tides on surface tides. Surface tides are the largest source of mechanical energy in the ocean, and approximately 25% of this energy is transferred to the deep ocean through interactions with seafloor topography, primarily via the generation of internal tides. Although open-ocean tidal dissipation represents only a fraction of the total tidal energy budget, the resulting internal tides are a major driver of ocean mixing. However, existing global barotropic tide models are unable to fully capture tidal energy dissipation in the open ocean, suggesting that important processes are still missing from current modelling frameworks. My research aims to identify these missing processes and improve the representation of internal-tide-induced effects on surface tides in ocean models.   

Across these research areas, my overall research goal is to understand how small-scale and fast-timescale physical processes, particularly internal waves, shape the large-scale circulation, energetics, and mixing of the global ocean, and influence the ocean's response to climate change.