Abstract
Inertial and internal waves caused by ocean rotation and stratification are governed by continuous-spectrum propagators, and their couplings—even weak ones—cannot be analyzed using envelope equation techniques. The emergence of energy fluxes in the spectrum is much more subtle and relies on the quasi-resonance mechanism presented in Chapter 3.
From a mathematical standpoint, the analysis of these fluxes requires the introduction of a statistical framework that takes advantage of the high deterministic variability to average out fluctuations and extract stable structures. This statistical approach, known as wave turbulence, is described by kinetic equations. In particular, it yields spectra consistent with observations.
