Ocean and laboratory observations on waves over topography

• Main Author: Lam, F.P. A.
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Utrecht University 2007
• Subjects: Natuur- en Sterrenkunde; oceanography; fluid dynamics; internal waves; tides; Biscay; Greenland Sea; continental shelf; reflection; focusing; attractor; Greenland
• Online Access: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/19156

This thesis addresses the observation, analysis and dynamics of waves as being trapped, generated and focused by sloping topography. ---Shelf waves with diurnal tidal frequency off Greenland--- Tidal analysis has been carried out on current measurements at a “cross-shelf” transect off Greenland at 71 N. The diurnal tides manifest themselves mainly as a barotropic continental shelf wave, travelling southward along the shelf slope. This follows from the amplitude distribution of the diurnal tidal components and from the rotation sense of the tidal ellipses at different cross-slope locations, as calculated with simple two-dimensional models. The well organized cross-slope pattern of the velocity amplitudes is absent in observations further north near 75 N. These observations suggest that the local vanishing of the group velocity, which is caused by topography, is of importance for the existence and local amplification of these continental shelf waves with diurnal tidal frequency. ---Tidal and residual currents near the shelf break in Biscay--- Internal-wave energy in continuously stratified fluids propagates in the vertical plane, at an angle set by the wave, buoyancy and Coriolis frequencies. Repeated Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler observations on three transects, crossing the shelf edge, now directly reveal this beam-wise propagation of internal tides in the Bay of Biscay. This confirms previous suggestions based on observations sampled more sparsely in space. The present observation is made by bin-wise harmonic analysis of horizontal currents, leading to the spatial resolution of barotropic and baroclinic semi-diurnal tidal and (time-averaged) residual flows. The observed baroclinic tide compares favourably to that produced by a two-dimensional numerical model. The observations reveal details of the internal tidal beam, including its spatial amplitude distribution, presence of amphidromes and direction of phase propagation. The cross-isobath structure of the along-slope barotropic mean flow shows a localized ...