%0 Journal Article %T Oceanic Mesoscale Eddy Depletion Catalyzed by Internal Waves %+ Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) %+ Laboratoire d'Océanographie Physique et Spatiale (LOPS) %A Barkan, Roy %A Srinivasan, Kaushik %A Yang, Luwei %A Mcwilliams, James C. %A Gula, Jonathan %A Vic, Clément %< avec comité de lecture %@ 0094-8276 %J Geophysical Research Letters %I American Geophysical Union %V 48 %8 2021 %D 2021 %Z 2021GeoRL..4894376B %R 10.1029/2021GL094376 %K oceanic energy transfers %K mesoscale eddies %K submesoscale fronts %K internal waves %Z Sciences of the Universe [physics] %Z Sciences of the Universe [physics]/Earth SciencesJournal articles %X The processes leading to the depletion of oceanic mesoscale kinetic energy (KE) and the energization of near-inertial internal waves are investigated using a suite of realistically forced regional ocean simulations. By carefully modifying the forcing fields we show that solutions where internal waves are forced have ∼25% less mesoscale KE compared with solutions where they are not. We apply a coarse-graining method to quantify the KE fluxes across time scales and demonstrate that the decrease in mesoscale KE is associated with an internal wave-induced reduction of the inverse energy cascade and an enhancement of the forward energy cascade from sub-to super-inertial frequencies. The integrated KE forward transfer rate in the upper ocean is equivalent to half and a quarter of the regionally averaged near-inertial wind work in winter and summer, respectively, with the strongest fluxes localized at surface submesoscale fronts and filaments. %G English %2 https://insu.hal.science/insu-03683256/document %2 https://insu.hal.science/insu-03683256/file/89141.pdf %L insu-03683256 %U https://insu.hal.science/insu-03683256 %~ IRD %~ INSU %~ UNIV-BREST %~ CNRS %~ IFREMER %~ IUEM %~ THESES_IUEM %~ LOPS %~ ANR