Nonlinear Stratified Spin-up with Applications to Oceanic Upwelling, Frontogenesis and Subduction

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

0095971/Rhines The project addresses two questions associated with the spin-up of rotating, stratified fluids like the ocean. The first concerns the effect of nonlinear coupling between the Ekman pumping induced by wind stress curl and the vorticity of the interior geostrophic flow generated by the Ekman pumping. The second concerns the generation of convective and inertial instabilities by the advection of horizontal density gradients in the Ekman layer by Ekman fluxes, together with the vertical mixing these instabilities produce. The work consists of the development and study of analytical and numerical models of three-dimensional representations of these phenomena together with experiments to reproduce these phenomena in the laboratory and to test the theoretical and numerical predictions. Numerical simulations will be extended to a model of coastal upwelling. The work builds on two-dimensional theoretical and numerical models of these processes.