Wake Signature Detection

An accumulated body of quantitative evidence shows that bluff-body wakes in stably stratified environments have an unusual degree of coherence and organization, so characteristic geometries such as arrays of alternating-signed vortices have very long lifetimes, as measured in units of buoyancy timescales, or in the downstream distance scaled by a body length. The combination of pattern geometry and persistence renders the detection of these wakes possible in principle. It now appears that identifiable signatures can be found from many disparate sources: Islands, fish, and plankton all have been noted to generate features that can be detected by climate modelers, hopeful navigators in open oceans, or hungry predators. The various types of wakes are reviewed with notes on why their signatures are important and to whom. A general theory of wake pattern formation is lacking and would have to span many orders of magnitude in Reynolds number.