Horizontal dispersion of buoyant materials in the ocean surface boundary layer

For strongly buoyant materials that stay at the ocean surface, shear dispersion is negligible compared to turbulent dispersion. The effective horizontal diffusivity due to shear dispersion is controlled by multiple factors, including wind speed, wave conditions, vertical diffusivity, mixed layer depth, latitude, and buoyant rising speed. With all other meteorological and hydrographic conditions being equal, the effective horizontal diffusivity is larger in wind-driven Ekman flows than in wave-driven Ekman-Stokes flows for weakly buoyant materials and is smaller in Ekman flows than in Ekman-Stokes flows for strongly buoyant materials.

The effective horizontal diffusivity is further reduced when enhanced mixing by breaking waves is included. Dispersion by OSBL flows is weaker than that by submesoscale currents at a scale larger than 100 m. The analytic framework will improve subgrid-scale modeling in realistic particle trajectory models using currents from operational ocean models.