The effect of bathymetry on the steady baroclinic ocean circulation

Physics

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Scientific paper

A general solution is derived for the steady wind- and thermohaline-driven barotropic velocity field in a variable-depth ocean under the mild assumption that the bathymetry does not penetrate up to the depth of appreciable horizontal density gradients. Bi-linear depth depencies give a simple form to the resulting integral and since they can be used to represent typical ocean bathymetries, they permit analytical solutions to be obtained for a wide class of driving functions. In particular the case of a western continental shelf, numerically solved by Holland (1973), is considered and the results are shown to be in agreement with this. The physical basis for the steady baroclinic circulation in an ocean of variable depth is made clear by vorticity arguments and, in particular, the “bottom torque” can be related directly to the stretching term in the barotropic vorticity balance. The resulting stream-line pattern depends also upon the coupling of the barotropic transport to the Ekman and baroclinic transports at the boundaries through the no-flux boundary condition.

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