Regional ocean circulation along the Oregon coast is studied numerically for forcing fields derived from year 2005 and climatological-mean conditions. The primary object is to study directly the Lagrangian pathways by which fluid arrives in the Oregon upwelling zone. Roughly half of the upwelling fluid is found to arrive in...
Turbulent bottom Ekman layers are among the most important energy conversion sites in the ocean. Their energetics are notoriously complex, in particular near sloping topography, where the feedback between cross-slope Ekman transports, buoyancy forcing, and mixing affects the energy budget in ways that are not well understood. Here, the authors...
Physical exchange between estuarine and continental shelf waters impacts flushing dynamics of the estuary and determines rates of ocean inputs of nutrients and plankton. To investigate the occurrence and propagation of shelf water intrusions into the Narragansett Bay estuary, we collected velocity data near the estuarine–shelf interface during three summer...
In most estuarine systems it is assumed that the dominant along-channel momentum balance is between the integrated pressure gradient and bed stress. Scaling the amplitude of the estuarine circulation based on this balance has been shown to have predictive skill. However, a number of authors recently highlighted important nonlinear processes...
Pressure differences across topography generate a form drag that opposes the flow in the water column, and viscous and pressure forces acting on roughness elements of the topographic surface generate a frictional drag on the bottom. Form drag and bottom roughness lengths were estimated over the East Flower Garden Bank...
The tidally varying circulation, stratification, and salt flux mechanisms are
investigated in a shallow salt wedge estuary where fluvial and tidal velocities are large and
the steady baroclinic circulation is comparatively weak. The study integrates field
observations and numerical simulations of the Merrimack River estuary. At moderate to
high discharge...
Turbulent mixing of salt is examined in a shallow salt wedge estuary with strong fluvial and tidal forcing. A numerical model of the Merrimack River estuary is used to quantify turbulent stress, shear production, and buoyancy flux. Little mixing occurs during flood tides despite strong velocities because bottom boundary layer...
Varied observations over Oregon’s continental shelf illustrate the
beauty and complexity of geophysical flows in coastal waters. Rapid, creative, and
sometimes fortuitous sampling from ships and moorings has allowed detailed looks
at boundary layer processes, internal waves (some extremely nonlinear), and coastal
currents, including how they interact. These processes drive...
Twelve days of microstructure measurements at the equator (140°W) in November 1984 showed a
surprisingly strong effect of both daily cycle of solar heating and wind on mixing in the upper ocean.
Because of limited variations in atmospheric forcing and currents during the experiment, processes in the
daily mixing cycle...
Results from a model of wind-driven circulation are analyzed to study spatial and temporal variability in
the bottom mixed layer (BML) on the mid-Oregon shelf in summer 2001. The model assimilates acoustic
Doppler profiler velocities from two cross-shore lines of moorings 90 km apart to provide improved
accuracy of near-bottom...