Giddy, IsabelleWhitt, DFer, ISwart, SBreivik, ONicholson, Sarah-Anne2026-08-182026-08-182026-060022-36701520-0485https://doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-25-0076.1http://hdl.handle.net/10204/14894We investigate the turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) budget of the upper ocean and its response to wind and wave forcing in the Southern Ocean, using realistically forced large-eddy simulations (LESs) and in situ microstructure shear observations. The widely used law of the wall similarity scaling assumes that shear production of TKE is balanced by its dissipation. However, our findings reiterate that this assumption is violated under wave forcing: Dissipation is primarily balanced by local Stokes shear production, augmented by almost equal contributions from local Eulerian shear production and nonlocal convergence of TKE transport. Despite this, the canonical law of the wall scaling reasonably describes the vertical distribution of dissipation rates in the boundary layer in both realistically forced LES and observations, even though the underlying physical reasoning does not hold. We propose a modified scaling to account for the nonlocal component of the TKE budget that yields accurate predictions of the TKE budget as well as an interpretation accounting for wave effects. These insights have important implications for interpreting turbulence dissipation rate observations.FulltextenSouthern OceanTurbulenceOceanic mixed layerSurface layerIn situ oceanic observationsLarge eddy simulationsArticlen/a