Slope/Shelf Circulation and Cross-Slope/Shelf Transport Out of a Bay Driven by Eddies from the Open Ocean

Interaction between the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the continental slope/shelf in the Marguerite Bay and west Antarctic Peninsula is examined as interaction between a wind-driven channel flow and a zonally uniform slope with a bay-shaped shelf to the south. Two control mechanisms, eddy advect...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Zhang, Yu
Other Authors: WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION MA
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2009
Subjects:
Physical and Dynamic Oceanography
Fluid Mechanics
*EDDIES(FLUID MECHANICS)
*CIRCULATION
*OCEANS
THESES
BOUNDARY LAYER
TOPOGRAPHY
CONTINENTAL SHELVES
CONTINENTAL SLOPES
TRANSPORT
SLOPE
CHANNEL FLOW
STRATIFICATION
ADVECTION
EDDY CURRENTS
OPEN WATER
ANTARCTIC REGIONS
SHOCK WAVES
BAYS
POLAR REGIONS
INTERACTIONS
Antarctic
Antarctic Peninsula
Marguerite
Marguerite Bay
The Antarctic
Antarc*
Antarctic Krill
Online Access:http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA510021
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA510021
Description
Summary:Interaction between the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the continental slope/shelf in the Marguerite Bay and west Antarctic Peninsula is examined as interaction between a wind-driven channel flow and a zonally uniform slope with a bay-shaped shelf to the south. Two control mechanisms, eddy advection and propagation of topographic waves, are found important for eddy topography interactions. The topographic waves become more nonlinear near the western (eastern if in the Northern Hemisphere) boundary of the bay, inducing strong cross-escarpment motions. A two-layer wind-driven channel flow spontaneously generates eddies through baroclinic instability. A PV front forms in the first layer shoreward of the base of the topography due to the lower-layer eddy-slope interactions. Both the cross-slope-edge transport and the out-of-bay transport are comparable with the model Ekman transport, suggesting the significance of the examined mechanism. The wave-boundary interaction is essential for the out-of-bay transport. Much more water is transported out of the bay from the west, and the southeastern area is the most isolated region. These results suggest that the southeastern region of the Marguerite Bay is a retention area for Antarctic krill. Prepared in cooperation with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. The original document contains color images.

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