Data from an array of bottom pressure gauges and a string of current meters in the vicinity of 47°N,
139°W, are used to examine the deep-ocean variability forced by ocean surface wind stress curl from
August 1987 to June 1988. Bottom geostrophic currents are computed from the pressure gauge array,...
A thermistor chain was towed 1400 km through the eastern North Pacific subtropical frontal zone in
January 1980. The observations resolve surface layer temperature features with horizontal wavelengths of
0.2-200 km and vertical scales of 10-70 m. The dominant features, which have horizontal wavelengths of
10-100 km, amplitudes of 0.2°-1.0°C,...
An analytical model of subtropical mode water is presented, based on ventilated thermocline theory and on numerical solutions of a planetary geostrophic basin model. In ventilated thermocline theory, the western pool is a region bounded on the east by subsurface streamlines that outcrop at the western edge of the interior,...
Lateral stirring is a basic oceanographic phenomenon affecting the distribution of physical, chemical, and biological fields. Eddy stirring at scales on the order of 100 km (the mesoscale) is fairly well understood and explicitly represented in modern eddy-resolving numerical models of global ocean circulation. The same cannot be said for...
Satellite observations of wind stress and sea surface temperature (SST) are analyzed to investigate ocean–atmosphere interaction in the California Current System (CCS). As in regions of strong SST fronts elsewhere in the World Ocean, SST in the CCS region is positively correlated with surface wind stress when SST fronts are...
Summertime low clouds are common in the Pacific Northwest (PNW), but spatiotemporal patterns have not been characterized. We show the first maps of low cloudiness for the western PNW and North Pacific Ocean using a 22‐year satellite‐derived record of monthly mean low cloudiness frequency for May through September and supplemented...
Linear disturbance growth is studied in a quasigeostrophic baroclinic channel model with several thousand degrees of freedom. Disturbances to an unstable, nonlinear wave-mean oscillation are analyzed, allowing the comparison of singular vectors and time-dependent normal modes (Floquet vectors). Singular vectors characterize the transient growth of linear disturbances in a specified...
We formulate analytically and solve numerically a semigeostrophic model for wind-driven thermocline upwelling at a coastal boundary. The model has a variable-density entraining mixed layer and two homogeneous interior layers. All variables are uniform alongshore. The wind stress and surface heating are constant. The system is started from rest, with...
Three mechanisms for self-induced Ekman pumping in the interiors of mesoscale ocean eddies are investigated.
The first arises from the surface stress that occurs because of differences between surface wind and
ocean velocities, resulting in Ekman upwelling and downwelling in the cores of anticyclones and cyclones,
respectively. The second mechanism...
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...