The behavior and relationship of anomalies of monthly mean sea level, coastal sea surface temperature and alongshore wind stress for the eastern Pacific Ocean during the period 1950–74 have been studied. Sea level and temperature records from Yakutat, Alaska (59°N) to Valparaiso, Chile (33°S) and computed alongshore wind stress at...
The generation of an alongshore mean flow by the nonlinear interaction of forced barotropic shelf waves over a continental margin is studied using a wind-forced, ƒ-plane model with bottom friction in an attempt to develop a model for poleward eastern boundary undercurrents. It is assumed that the Rossby number is...
Case history analysis, cross spectra and multiple regression analysis have been used in a study of low-pass filtered sea level records from the Pacific mainland coast of Mexico in 1971 and 1973–75. During the summer-fall season (May–October), sea level variability is characterized by strong alongshore coherence and nondispersive, poleward phase...
Vertically propagating coastal internal Kelvin waves (IKWs) forward by the alongshore component of the wind at the coast are studied, utilizing an ƒ-plane model of a continuously stratified ocean with a vertical eastern boundary. With an infinitely deep ocean, several initial value problems that illustrate the basic properties of the...
Empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis in the frequency domain is extended to complex time series. EOFs are calculated from the eigenvectors of the band-averaged rotary cross-spectral matrix. This gives EOF amplitude and phase for negative and positive frequencies, corresponding to clockwise and anticlockwise rotation for the hodograph model. Rotary EOF...
Along the west Coast of North America, the response of sea level to fluctuations in alongshore wind stress at large alongshore scales (> 1000 km) accounted for a substantial faction of the total sea level variance during summer 1973. Space-time contour plots of sea level and alongshore stress show that...
As part of a study of the large-scale response of coastal sea level to atmospheric forcing along the west coast of North America during June–September 1973, Halliwell and Allen calculate space- and time-lagged cross-correlation coefficients Rτζ between adjusted sea level ζ at fixed alongshore locations ζ(y0) and the alongshore component...
The effect of bottom friction on the subinertial frequency motion of stratified shelf flow fields is studied in a two-layer ƒ-plane model with idealized shelf and slope bottom topography. Coastal-trapped fire waves and motion forced by the alongshore component of the wind stress at the coast are considered. Vertical turbulent-diffusion...
Hourly observations of coastal sea level at stations from Peru to British Columbia are analyzed for low-frequency content. A space-time contour plot of sea level, from four years of data during the 1971–75 period, shows the meridional structure of the seasonal cycle and interannual variability associated with the 1972–73 El...
Observations of oppositely directed, monthly mean alongshore currents and wind stress over the continental margin off the Pacific coast of North America motivate the theoretical examination of mean flow generation by topographic lee-wave drag. We formulate a barotropic model for wind-forced shelf-slope flow over variable topography. Our central objective is...