Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 43 (2013): 905–919, doi:10.1175/JPO-D-12-0150.1.
Description:
Interactions between vortices and a shelfbreak current are investigated, with particular attention to the exchange of waters between the continental shelf and slope. The nonlinear, three-dimensional interaction between an anticyclonic vortex and the shelfbreak current is studied in the laboratory while varying the ratio ε of the maximum azimuthal velocity in the vortex to the maximum alongshelf velocity in the shelfbreak current. Strong interactions between the shelfbreak current and the vortex are observed when ε 〉 1; weak interactions are found when ε 〈 1. When the anticyclonic vortex comes in contact with the shelfbreak front during a strong interaction, a streamer of shelf water is drawn offshore and wraps anticyclonically around the vortex. Measurements of the offshore transport and identification of the particle trajectories in the shelfbreak current drawn offshore from the vortex allow quantification of the fraction of the shelfbreak current that is deflected onto the slope; this fraction increases for increasing values of ε. Experimental results in the laboratory are strikingly similar to results obtained from observations in the Middle Atlantic Bight (MAB); after proper scaling, measurements of offshore transport and offshore displacement of shelf water for vortices in the MAB that span a range of values of ε agree well with laboratory predictions.
Description:
Laboratory work was supported by the
National Science Foundation through Grant OCE-
0081756. Glider observations in March–April 2006 were
supported by the National Science Foundation through
Grant OCE-0220769. Glider observations in July–
October 2007 were supported by a grant from Raytheon.
RET was supported by the Postdoctoral Scholar Program
at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
with funding provided by the Cooperative Institute for
the North Atlantic Region. The REMUS observations
were funded by the Office of Naval Research. GGG was
supported by the National Science Foundation through
Grant OCE-1129125 for analysis and writing.
Description:
2013-11-01
Keywords:
Continental shelf/slope
;
Eddies
;
Fronts
;
Transport
;
Laboratory/physical models
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
application/pdf
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