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On coastal trapped waves at low latitudes in a stratified ocean

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2006

J. S. Allen  and
R. D. Romea
J. S. Allen
Affiliation:
School of Oceanography, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331
R. D. Romea
Affiliation:
School of Oceanography, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331
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Abstract

Results from idealized ocean models indicate that equatorially trapped baroclinic waves incident on an eastern boundary may be partially transmitted north and south along the coast as boundary-trapped internal Kelvin waves. The offshore scale of the coastal internal Kelvin waves is the internal Rossby radius of deformation δR, which decreases as the Coriolis parameter f increases. The effect of the presence of a continental slope of width Ls, along a north–south oriented coastline, on the poleward propagation of coastal trapped internal Kelvin waves is studied in a two-layer β-plane model. The waves propagate from regions near the equator where δR > Ls to mid-latitudes where δR < Ls. It is assumed that f varies slowly on the alongshore scale of the waves L, that L [Gt ] Ls, and that either the topographic slope is weak or that the upper-layer depth is small compared to the lower-layer depth. All of the coastal trapped waves present in the model are non-dispersive. For most values of f, the cross-shelf eigen-functions consist of the internal Kelvin wave and an infinite set of continental shelf waves whose vertical structure depends on δR/Ls. For δR/Ls [Gt ] 1, the shelf waves are bottom trapped while for δR/Ls [Lt ] 1 they are barotropic. The wave speeds Cn of the shelf waves vary linearly with f, whereas the wave speed c0 of the internal Kelvin wave is independent of f. As f increases through critical values fCn, where Cn approaches C0, the phase speeds and the eigenfunctions vary so that the eigenfunctions represent a different type of wave on either side of fCn. In the slowly-varying approximation, the alongshore energy flux in each eigenfunction is a constant. It follows that an internal Kelvin wave which has a wavelength short enough that the slowly-varying approximation remains valid and which propagates poleward from the equatorial region where f < fC1 will transform into a shelf wave, at values of f near fC1, and will continue propagation poleward in that form. As a result, coastal trapped baroclinic disturbances may be able to propagate efficiently from the equatorial region to mid-latitudes where they may take the form of barotropic shelf waves.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 98 , Issue 3 , 12 June 1980 , pp. 555 - 585
Copyright
© 1980 Cambridge University Press

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