Instability of the halocline at the North Pole
Geophysics
2026-04-09 v3 Mathematical Physics
Analysis of PDEs
math.MP
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics
Fluid Dynamics
Abstract
In this paper we address the issue of stability for the near-inertial Pollard waves, as a model for the halocline in the region of the Arctic Ocean centered around the North Pole, derived in Puntini (2026). Adopting the short-wavelength instability approach, the stability of such flows reduces to study the stability of a system of ODEs along fluid trajectories, leading to the result that, when the steepness of the near-inertial Pollard waves exceeds a specific threshold, those waves are linearly unstable. The explicit dispersion relation of the model allows to easily compute such threshold, knowing the physical properties of the water column.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.21378,
title = {Instability of the halocline at the North Pole},
author = {Christian Puntini},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.21378},
year = {2026}
}