Go through enough journal articles and eventually ones will show up that actually explain near-inertial waves and the history of their research. Note too F Gimbert fired off a small burst of articles on this, not just the one above.
Dynamics of the Changing Near-Inertial Internal Wave Field in the Arctic Ocean
Hayley V. Dosser; Luc Rainville
J. Phys. Oceanogr. (2016) 46 (2): 395–415.
https://journals.ametsoc.org/jpo/article/46/2/395/12534'The dynamics of the wind-generated near-inertial internal wave field in the Canada Basin of the Arctic Ocean are investigated using the drifting Ice-Tethered Profiler dataset for the years 2005 to 2014, during a decade when sea ice extent and thickness decreased dramatically. This time series, with nearly 10 years of measurements and broad spatial coverage, is used to quantify a seasonal cycle and inter-annual trend for internal waves in the Arctic, using estimates of the amplitude of near-inertial waves derived from isopycnal displacements.
'The internal wave field is found to be most energetic in summer when sea ice is at a minimum, with a second maximum in early winter during the period of maximum wind speed.
'The standard picture of Arctic internal waves derives from observations made during the 1980s and 1990s [e.g., the Arctic Internal Waves Experiment (AIWEX) in spring of 1985 (Levine et al. 1987; D’Asaro and Morehead 1991; Merrifield and Pinkel 1996) and the Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Experiment (SHEBA) in 1997 to 1998 (Pinkel 2005)], which found a quiescent Arctic Ocean with an internal wave field energy level an order of magnitude or more below that at lower latitudes (Levine et al. 1985, 1987).
'Low internal wave energy levels in the Arctic are attributed to the presence of sea ice, which causes dissipation of internal waves in the under-ice surface boundary layer, limiting energy propagation across the Arctic (Morison et al. 1985; Pinkel 2005; Fer 2014). It has been suggested that sea ice impedes momentum transfer from the wind to the water column (Plueddemann et al. 1998), with ice deformation being of more importance to internal wave generation (Halle and Pinkel 2003).
'Most of the energy in the internal wave field is contained in the near-inertial frequency band, from roughly f–1.1f, where f is the local Coriolis or inertial frequency (Garrett and Munk 1972; Garrett 2001). In the Arctic Ocean, observations of the internal wave spectrum show the expected peak at the inertial frequency (Halle and Pinkel 2003; Fer 2014; Cole et al. 2014). Near-inertial internal waves can be generated whenever wind stress resonantly forces the air–ice or air–water interface at or near the inertial frequency. In the Northern Hemisphere,
anticyclonic or clockwise inertial oscillations are set up in the sea ice and mixed layer.
These purely horizontal oscillations create disturbances at the base of the mixed layer, generating a freely propagating near-inertial wave in the stratified water column below (D’Asaro 1985). The result is vertical propagation of energy through the water column to depths at which the internal waves can become unstable and break (Gregg et al. 1986; Hebert and Moum 1994).
'Near-inertial internal waves can also be generated as a result of the motion of drifting sea ice. The rough bottom of the ice impulsively forces the water column, or there may be horizontal variations in bottom roughness that cause vertical motion of the fluid below. This results in a pattern of forcing related to ice roughness and ice–ocean drag that is moving at the velocity of the sea ice, which can generate internal waves (McPhee and Kantha 1989) with horizontal and spatial scales consistent with observations of near-inertial waves in the Arctic Ocean (D’Asaro and Morehead 1991).'
Recent mechanical weakening of the Arctic sea ice cover
as revealed from larger inertial oscillations
F Gimbert NC Jourdain D Marsan J Weiss B. Barnier
Our approach, performed at the basin and multi-decadal scales from the International Arctic Buoy Programme (IABP) data set, consists in the analysis of the response of sea ice to the well-defined Coriolis force. As this specific forcing is constant over time, an evolution of the response, i.e., of ice motion around the inertial frequency f0 ≈ 2 cycles.d1 within the arctic basin, would be a signature of a change in the mechanical behavior of the ice cover.
Ww performed a statistical analysis of the magnitude of inertial motion, relatively to the norm of the velocities, and revealed spatial and seasonal patterns in agreement with the corresponding ice concentration and thickness patterns, i.e., inertial motion is more pronounced in regions (Beaufort Sea, eastern Arctic) and seasons (summers) where ice is thinner and less concentrated. This analysis also revealed a significant strengthening of ice inertial motion at the basin scale, in both summer and winter, in recent years.
This evolution, we suggested, is likely to be the signature of a mechanical weakening of the ice cover and a decrease of the magnitude of internal stresses. This analysis, however, did not allow to differentiate precisely the direct effect of ice thinning, the effect of a possible modification of vertical penetration of turbulent momentum within the ocean boundary layer, or that of an actual mechanical weakening, onto this strengthening of inertial motion.