Laboratory Studies of Density Increase on Shelves

• Main Author: Whitehead, John A
• Other Authors: WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION MA
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2000
• Subjects: Physical and Dynamic Oceanography; Fluid Mechanics; *CONTINENTAL SHELVES; *FLUID MECHANICS; *TRANSPORT; ARCTIC OCEAN; BUOYANCY; DEEP DEPTH; DENSITY; FLOW; PATTERNS; POLAR REGIONS; WIND; *ALONG-SHELF TRANSPORT; Arctic; Arctic Ocean
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA609729; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA609729

The long-term goal is to understand the fluid mechanics of buoyancy and wind driven transport on a polar continental shelf, including along-shelf transport and exchange with the deep Arctic Ocean. The objective is to understand flows in scaled laboratory experiments in a manner suitable for application to processes in physical oceanography. Prototype laboratory experiments are designed and approximate theories and scaling are laid out. Their results indicate design requirements for refined experiments that yield observations of flow patterns and quantitative measurements of important parameters. These are compared with theory and ocean data.