The deep sea is weakly stratified in density but shows considerable variations in turbulent motions in all three directions. When registered by moored high-resolution temperature 'T'-sensors, the motions cause variations of 0.01degrC or less and in time of minutes or less, which is much faster than hours or longer of internal waves. Occasionally, T-sensors close to the seafloor register minute-long flashes of 0.0005-0.001degrC warmer than the environment. When singular, such flashes may be artefacts. However, in a large mooring-array with 45 vertical lines at 9.5-m horizontal distances, near-seafloor heat flashes are seen to travel, most likely with internal-wave instabilities in overlying stratified waters. The instabilities seem to release the flashes from a geothermally heated seafloor of which turbulence convection is suppressed by warmer waters from above. The forms and turbulence intensity of these rare signals are compared with those induced by a Remotely Operated Vehicle working near the array. Other causes like unidentified marine mammal passing are hypothesized.

Vertically stable in density, stratified-water conditions 'SW' exist in the deep Mediterranean Sea that are characterized by temperature differences of 0.0002-0.01degrC over 125 m above a flat seafloor. These result in a mean buoyancy frequency of N = (1.5-2)f, where f denotes the inertial frequency. Although the stability values are one order of magnitude smaller than found in the ocean, they govern a dynamical deep sea as demonstrated using observations from a 3D mooring-array equipped with nearly 3000 high-resolution temperature sensors. SW-conditions can last up to a fortnight, before waters become near-homogeneous, and occur about 40

A nearly half-cubic hectometer of deep Mediterranean-Sea waters is yearlong sampled with about 3000 high-resolution temperature sensors to study different sources of turbulent waterflows, which are vital for life. Although temperature differences are never larger than 0.01degrC, daily, weekly, and seasonal variations are observed. About half the time, relatively warm stratified waters are moved from 100's of meters higher levels to near the seafloor. These internal-wave and sub-mesoscale eddy-induced motions are half an order of magnitude more turbulent than those induced via general geothermal heating from below, and about one order of magnitude more turbulent than those from open-ocean processes. A rough estimate shows that eddy-induced stratified turbulence is likely more important for deep-sea life than rare, not observed, deep dense-water formation at the abyssal-plain mooring site. With a delay of about a week, the stratified turbulence tracks atmospheric disturbances, which are found 35

Abstract. It may be important to precisely know heights of moored oceanographic instrumentation. For example, moorings can be closely spaced or accidentally be located on small rocks or in small gullies. Height variations O(1 m) will yield registration of different values when conditions such as small-scale density stratification vary strongly. Such little height variations may prove difficult to measure in the deep sea, requiring high-accuracy pressure sensors preferably on all instruments in a mooring-array. In this paper, an alternative method for relative height determination is presented using high-resolution temperature sensors moored on multiple densely-spaced lines in the deep Western Mediterranean. While it was anticipated that height variations between lines could be detected under near-homogeneous conditions via adiabatic lapse rate O(0.0001 °C m-1) by the 0.00003 °C-noise-level sensors, such was prevented by the impossibility of properly correcting for short-term bias due to electronic drift. Instead, a satisfactory height determination was found during a period of relatively strong stratification and large turbulence activity. By band-pass filtering data of the highest-resolved turbulent motions across the strongest temperature gradient, significant height variations were detectable to within ±0.2 m.

It may be important to precisely know heights of moored oceanographic instrumentation. For example, moorings can be closely spaced or accidentally be located on small rocks or in small gullies. Height variations O(1 m) will yield registration of different values when conditions such as small-scale density stratification vary strongly. Such little height variations may prove difficult to measure in the deep sea, requiring high-accuracy pressure sensors preferably on all instruments in a mooring-array. In this paper, an alternative method for relative height determination is presented using high-resolution temperature sensors moored on multiple densely-spaced lines in the deep Western Mediterranean. While it was anticipated that height variations between lines could be detected under near-homogeneous conditions via adiabatic lapse rate O(0.0001degrC m-1) by the 0.00003degrC-noise-level sensors, such was prevented by the impossibility of properly correcting for short-term bias due to electronic drift. Instead, a satisfactory height determination was found during a period of relatively strong stratification and large turbulence activity. By band-pass filtering data of the highest-resolved turbulent motions across the strongest temperature gradient, significant height variations were detectable to within +/-0.2 m.

A three-dimensional mooring array holding nearly 3000 high-resolution temperature sensors in 2500 m deep Mediterranean-Sea waters is used for a yearlong study on different sources of turbulent waterflows, which are vital for life. Although temperature differences are found never larger than 0.01 degrees C, daily, weekly, and seasonal variations are observed. With a delay of about a week, the deep-sea stratified turbulence tracks atmospheric disturbances, which are found 35 % more energetic in winter than in summer. About half the time, relatively warm stratified waters are moved to near the seafloor from 100's of meters higher levels. Combined internal-wave and sub-mesoscale eddy-induced motions lead to slantwise downward convective warm-water periods that are half an order of magnitude more turbulent than those induced via general geothermal heating from below, and about one order of magnitude more turbulent than those from open-ocean processes. The analysis estimates that eddy-induced stratified turbulence is likely more important for deep-sea life than rare, not observed, deep dense-water formation at the abyssal-plain mooring site.

Turbulence is indispensable to redistribute nutrients for all life forms larger than microbial, on land and in the ocean. Yet, the development of deep-sea turbulence was not studied in three dimensions to date. As a disproportionate laboratory, an array of nearly 3,000 high-resolution temperature sensors had been installed for three years on the flat 2,500-m deep bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The time series from the half-cubic hectometer mooring-array allows for the creation of unique movies of deep-sea water motions. Although temperature differences are typically 0.001 degrees C, variable convection-turbulence is observed as expected from geothermal heating through the flat seafloor. During about 40% of the time, an additional turbulence, 3 times stronger in magnitude, is observed from slantwise advected warmer waters to pass in turbulent clouds. Besides turbulent clouds and seafloor heating, movies also reveal weakly turbulent interfacial-wave breakdown that commonly occurs in the open ocean far away from boundaries.

Deep-sea observations are reported of horizontal waterflow differences with typical amplitudes of 0.02 m s-1 over 50-m small scales so that relative vorticity reaches values of the inertial frequency f. The timeseries observations are made using a complex mooring system deployed in the 2500-m deep Mediterranean Sea, where vertical density stratification is extremely weak, with buoyancy frequency O(f), and the slow waterflow with total speeds <0.07 m s-1 is dominated by inertial internal waves and sub-mesoscale eddies. Horizontal waterflow differences increase when polarization, i.e. direction of traversal of elliptic oscillatory motion, switches sign. Common anticyclonic polarization of inertial motions is predominantly found under near-homogeneous conditions. It alternates with uncommon cyclonic polarization under stratified-water conditions, varyingly over 50-m distances. The alternation is in line with predictions from non-traditional inertio-gravity wave theory, but only when relatively strong turbulent convection causes local reduced stratification, as observed.

Abstract Turbidity currents transport vast amounts of sediment, carbon, and heat along submarine channels, yet their overspill onto channel‐levees and abyssal mixing remain poorly constrained due to lack of direct observations. Ocean‐bottom seismometers (OBS) deployed on the Congo Canyon–Channel levees captured the structure and turbulence of overspill during an exceptionally large canyon‐flushing event in 2020. Overspill persisted for 3 weeks and comprised numerous short (20‐min to 2‐hr) pulses focused at outer bends. Spectra during overspill show well‐resolved turbulence inertial subranges, yielding event‐average dissipation rates of 10−6–10−5 m2 s−3, comparable to energetic internal‐tide breaking. Abyssal overspill can therefore be long‐lasting and highly pulsed, providing an episodic but locally important source of deep‐ocean mixing. This new view of levee overspill has important implications for building levees and the interpretation of ancient turbidites. Individual levee deposits may be formed incrementally by many pulses of dilute and fine‐grained flow from a single turbidity current.

Height variations O(1) m of closely spaced moored oceanographic instrumentation are difficult to measure in the deep sea, requiring high-accuracy pressure sensors preferably on all instruments in a mooring-array. In this paper, an alternative method for relative height determination is presented using 2 m spaced high-resolution temperature sensors moored on multiple 9.5 m-spaced lines in the deep Western Mediterranean Sea. While it was anticipated that height variations between lines could be detected under near-homogeneous conditions via adiabatic lapse rate O(10(-4) degrees C m(-1)) by the 3 & times; 10(-5) degrees C-noise-level sensors, such was prevented by the impossibility of properly correcting for short-term bias due to electronic drift. Instead, a satisfactory height determination was achieved during a period of relatively strong stratification and large turbulence activity. By band-pass filtering data of the highest-resolved turbulent motions across the strongest temperature gradient, significant height variations were detectable to within +/- 0.2 m.

Very weakly density-stratified, near-homogeneous 'NH' conditions are found in the deep Western Mediterranean Sea. Under these conditions, over vertical ranges of several hundreds of meters water temperature varies only a few 0.0001degrC and the buoyancy frequency is smaller than the local inertial frequency. While such waters are characterized as 'quiescent', they are not stagnant and demonstrate regular bursts of turbulent overturns across scales larger than 10 m that are relevant for deep-sea life. As will be shown from a 3D mooring-array with nearly 3000 high-resolution temperature 'T-'sensors, consecutive NH conditions can last up to a fortnight, before stratified waters are advected over the array. At the site, NH conditions occur about 60

Interaction between energy-abundant (sub-)mesoscale eddies and internal waves can lead to turbulence generation and may prove important for replenishment of nutrients for deep-sea life and circulation. However, observational evidence of such interaction is scarce and precise energy transfer is unknown. In this paper, an extensive spectral study is reported using mooring data from nearly 3000 high-resolution temperature sensors in about half-a-cubic hectometer of seawater above a deep flat Northwestern-Mediterranean seafloor. The number of independent data records partially improves statistics for better determination of spectral slopes, which however do not show a roll-off to the viscous dissipation range of turbulence. The spectra hardly show power-laws omega^p having exponent p = -5/3 representing an inertial subrange that evidences shear-induced isotropic turbulence. Instead, they are dominated by p = -7/5 representing a buoyancy subrange, which evidences convection-induced anisotropic turbulence. In contrast with p=-5/3 that indicates a downgradient cascade of energy, p=-7/5 characterizes by an ambiguous cascade direction. At height h<50 m above seafloor, p=-7/5 is found adjacent to instrumental noise. The p=-7/5 is also found in the sub-mesoscale/internal wave band that is elevated in variance by one order of magnitude. It is reasoned that this sub-inertial range cannot represent isotropic motions, hence p .ne. -5/3 at all heights, and a new deep-sea energy cascade is proposed between mesoscales and turbulence dissipation. Only higher up in more stratified waters an inertial subrange is formed. The transition from internal waves into large-scale turbulence follows p = -2, while a higher-frequency transition from 0 to pi phase change reflects overturns of slanted convection or standing-wave breaking leading to isotropic turbulence.

The Mediterranean Sea is known for its limited tidal motions. For example, surface barotropic tidal elevations have an amplitude of 0.1 m in the Northwestern Mediterranean. Nevertheless, these small tides are noticeable in temperature records at the 2500-m deep seafloor, but only under near-homogeneous conditions when buoyancy frequency N < f, the inertial frequency. After transfer of pressure to temperature units via the local adiabatic lapse rate, the observed internal-wave temperature signals may thus be corrected for 1.5x10-5-degrC amplitude semidiurnal barotropic tides. The remaining baroclinic tides are embedded in the broad and featureless inertio-gravity wave band, with some energy enhancement near its boundaries, also under tenfold-larger energetic stratified water conditions.

Interaction between energy-abundant mesoscale eddies and internal waves can lead to convection-turbulence generation and may prove important for deep-sea life and circulation. However, the size of scales of interacting flows is not well known. In this paper, a diagnostic tool of tilt is tested near the single top-buoyancy of 40 mooring lines 9.5 m apart horizontally and compared with 50-m scale relative vorticity and waterflow above a 2500-m deep flat Northwestern-Mediterranean seafloor. Whilst tilt relates to first order with flow-speed squared induced by mooring-line drag, considerable deviations from this relationship and larger tilt occur when the amplitude of relative vorticity attains values O(f), f the inertial frequency of planetary vorticity. The sign of relative vorticity is of no importance. Such larger-tilt events occur during most intense convection turbulence via warm-water slanting from above. During these events, variations in tilt-angle magnitude are as large as the average tilt O(0.1)degree, thereby reducing variational scales from 50 to 9.5 m. Thus, in a deep-sea environment where flow speeds are <0.07 m s^-1, O(0.01) m s^-1 flow-speed variations provide important turbulent mixing, without deep dense-water formation.

Position calibration in the deep sea is typically done by means of acoustic multilateration using three or more acoustic emitters installed at known positions. Rather than using hydrophones as receivers that are exposed to the ambient pressure, the sound signals can be coupled to piezo ceramics glued to the inside of existing containers for electronics or measuring instruments of a deep sea infrastructure. The ANTARES neutrino telescope operated from 2006 until 2022 in the Mediterranean Sea at a depth exceeding 2000 m. It comprised nearly 900 glass spheres with 432 mm diameter and 15 mm thickness, equipped with photomultiplier tubes to detect Cherenkov light from tracks of charged elementary particles. In an experimental setup within ANTARES, piezo sensors have been glued to the inside of such – otherwise empty – glass spheres. These sensors recorded signals from acoustic emitters with frequencies from 46545 to 60235 Hz. Two waves propagating through the glass sphere are found as a result of the excitation by the waves in the water. These can be qualitatively associated with symmetric and asymmetric Lamb-like waves of zeroth order: a fast (early) one with v_e ≈ 5 mm/μs and a slow (late) one with v_ℓ≈ 2 mm/μs . Taking these findings into account improves the accuracy of the position calibration. The results can be transferred to the KM3NeT neutrino telescope, currently under construction at multiple sites in the Mediterranean Sea, for which the concept of piezo sensors glued to the inside of glass spheres has been adapted for monitoring the positions of the photomultiplier tubes.

In the era of precision measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters, it is necessary for experiments to disentangle discrepancies that may indicate physics beyond the Standard Model in the neutrino sector. KM3NeT/ORCA is a water Cherenkov neutrino detector under construction and anchored at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. The detector is designed to study the oscillations of atmospheric neutrinos and determine the neutrino mass ordering. This paper focuses on the initial configuration of ORCA, referred to as ORCA6, which comprises six out of the foreseen 115 detection units of photosensors. A high-purity neutrino sample was extracted during 2020 and 2021, corresponding to an exposure of 433 kton-years. This sample is analysed following a binned log-likelihood approach to search for invisible neutrino decay, in a three-flavour neutrino oscillation scenario, where the third neutrino mass state ν3 decays into an invisible state, e.g. a sterile neutrino. The resulting best fit of the invisible neutrino decay parameter is α_3=0.92_-0.57^+1.08×10^-4 eV2, corresponding to a scenario with θ23 in the second octant and normal neutrino mass ordering. The results are consistent with the Standard Model, within a 2.1 σ interval.

Turbulent water motions are important for the exchange of momentum, heat, nutrients, and suspended matter, including sediments in the deep sea. The motions occur in a deep sea that is generally stably stratified in density. To maintain ocean-density stratification, an irreversible diapycnal turbulent transport is needed. The geological shape and texture of marine topography are important for water mixing, as most deep-sea turbulence is generated via internal waves breaking at sloping seafloors. For example, slopes of semidiurnal internal tidal characteristics can "critically" match the mean seafloor slope. In this paper, the concept of critical slopes is revisited from a global internal-wave turbulence viewpoint using seafloor topography and moored high-resolution temperature sensor data. Observations suggest that turbulence generation via internal-wave breaking at 5 % +/- 1.5 % of all seafloors is sufficient to maintain ocean-density stratification. However, most, >90 %, turbulence contributions are found at supercritical, rather than the more limited critical, slopes measured at 1 ' scales that cover about 50 % of seafloors at water depths <2000 m. Internal tides (similar to 60 %) dominate over near-inertial waves (similar to 40 %), which is confirmed by comparison of northeastern Atlantic data and eastern Mediterranean data (weak tides) at the same mid-latitude. Seafloor elevation spectra show a wavenumber (k) falloff rate of k(-3), which is steeper than what was found previously. The falloff rate is even steeper, resulting in less elevation variance in a 1-order-of-magnitude bandwidth around kT=0.5 cycle km(-1). The corresponding length is equivalent to the internal wave excursion length. The reduction in seafloor elevation variance seems to be associated with seafloor erosion by internal wave breaking. The potential robustness of the seafloor and internal wave interaction is discussed.

Oscillations of atmospheric muon and electron neutrinos produce tau neutrinos with energies in the GeV range, which can be observed by the ORCA detector of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. First measurements with ORCA6, an early subarray corresponding to about 5 S_τ=0.48_-0.33^+0.5 . This translates into a ντ charged-current cross section measurement of σ_τ^meas=(2.5_-1.8^+2.6)×10^-38 cm2 nucleon−1 at the median ντ energy of 20.3 GeV. The result is consistent with the measurements of other experiments. In addition, the current limit on the non-unitarity parameter affecting the τ-row of the neutrino mixing matrix was improved, with α33 > 0.95 at the 95

Neutrinos described as an open quantum system may interact with the environment which introduces stochastic perturbations to their quantum phase. This mechanism leads to a loss of coherence along the propagation of the neutrino - a phenomenon commonly referred to as decoherence - and ultimately, to a modification of the oscillation probabilities. Fluctuations in space-time, as envisaged by various theories of quantum gravity, are a potential candidate for a decoherence-inducing environment. Consequently, the search for decoherence provides a rare opportunity to investigate quantum gravitational effects which are usually beyond the reach of current experiments. In this work, quantum decoherence effects are searched for in neutrino data collected by the KM3NeT/ORCA detector from January 2020 to November 2021. The analysis focuses on atmospheric neutrinos within the energy range of a few GeV to 100 GeV. Adopting the open quantum system framework, decoherence is described in a phenomenological manner with the strength of the effect given by the parameters Γ_21 and Γ_31. Following previous studies, a dependence of the type Γ_ij∝ (E/E_0)^n on the neutrino energy is assumed and the cases n = -2,-1 are explored. No significant deviation with respect to the standard oscillation hypothesis is observed. Therefore, 90 % CL upper limits are estimated as Γ_21 < 4.6· 10^-21GeV and Γ_31 < 8.4· 10^-21GeV for n = -2, and Γ_21 < 1.9· 10^-22GeV and Γ_31 < 2.7· 10^-22GeV for n = -1, respectively.