Publication Date:
2022-05-26
Description:
The flow through the Strait of Gibraltar has always held a special
fascination for oceanographers. Attempts to understand and measure the
strong currents in the Strait stimulated many of the early advances in
oceanography (Deacon, 1971). Over the centuries, the focus of scientific
investigations has shifted from understanding how the mass budget of the
Mediterranean is maintained in the presence of the strong inflow of
Atlantic water through the Strait of Gibraltar, to observing the outflow of
Mediterranean water over the Gibraltar sill, to measuring the two-layer.
exchange of Atlantic inflow and Mediterranean outflow through the Strait.
In the past few years the focus has again shifted to the study of how the
dynamical constraints for flow through a narrow and shallow strait act to
control the amount of exchange between the Atlantic and Mediterranean
basins. To investigate the dynamics of flow through a strait, a year-long
field experiment has been designed to measure the flows through the Strait
of Gibraltar, including their time variability over tidal to seasonal time
scales, and to assess the importance of friction, mixing, rotation, and
nonlinear processes in controlling the exchange through the Strait. This
field program, called the Gibraltar Experiment, will be carried out by a
group of American, Spanish, Moroccan, Canadian and French scientists during
the period from Fall 1985 to Fall 1986.
Description:
Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research
under contracts no. N00014-82-C-0019, NR 083-004, and
N00014-85-C-0001, NR 083-004.
Keywords:
Oceanography
;
Oceanic mixing
;
Ocean currents
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Technical Report
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