Three-Dimensional Wind-Driven Flow in an Elongated, Rotating Basin
| Autor: | Clinton D. Winant |
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| Rok vydání: | 2004 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Physical Oceanography. 34:462-476 |
| ISSN: | 1520-0485 0022-3670 |
| DOI: | 10.1175/1520-0485(2004)034<0462:twfiae>2.0.co;2 |
| Popis: | The wind-driven circulation in lakes, lagoons, estuaries, or coastal embayments is described with a linear, steady, three-dimensional barotropic model in an elongated basin of arbitrary depth distribution, on an f plane. With rotation, the vertically averaged velocity scales with the Ekman depth rather than the maximum depth h0 as in the case without rotation. Near the closed ends of the basin, the flow turns in viscous boundary layers. Because the length of the turning areas depends on the sign of the bottom slope and on δ, the ratio of the Ekman depth to h0, there is a striking contrast between the turning areas on either side of an observer looking toward the end of the basin. In the Northern Hemisphere, the turning area on the left is broad, of order δ−1B*, where B* is the basin half-width. The turning area on the right is narrow, of order δB*, and dynamically equivalent to the western boundary current in models of the wind-driven ocean circulation. Ekman solutions are used to describe the ve... |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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