Waves Play a Key Role for Lateral Stirring and Mixing of Ocean Tracers

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.

Source: AGU Advances

Ocean waves originate from a movement of energy, with limited displacement of fluid particles along the main wave direction. For this reason, they are often thought to be ineffective in stirring and mixing of oceanic tracers like heat, salt, carbon and others. However, recent observations of tracer dispersion at spatial scale lower than 10 km highlighted the urgency of gaining an improved understanding of the role of waves to determine dispersion of passive tracers.

Using numerical models and theoretical considerations, Sanjay and Thomas [2026] look at how waves affect the movement of tracers in wave-rich environments. They find that wave effects are more important for lateral stirring and mixing than was previously thought. The results suggest solutions to improve the accuracy of large-scale ocean models, therefore reducing tracer modeling biases, and ultimately improving predictions of ocean climate variability.

Citation: Sanjay, C. P., & Thomas, J. (2026). Irreversible stirring and mixing of tracers by oceanic internal gravity waves. AGU Advances, 7, e2026AV002429. https://doi.org/10.1029/2026AV002429

—Alberto Montanari, Editor-in-Chief, AGU Advances

Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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