The Drifting Confluence Zone

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Alongshore migration of a western boundary current separation is investigated with a nonlinear inviscid reduced gravity model on an f plane. Separation due to a collision with an opposing current is considered. It is known that for such a case stationary collision and separation is possible only for boundary currents with “balanced” transports, that is, equal near-wall depths. The authors perturb this stationary solution with a small steplike variation of the opposing current transport and focus on the resulting time-dependent flow. Two different analytical methods to compute the migration rate are used. The first method involves integrated balances, and the second involves the path equation for the separated flow. Using the fist approach, it is found analytically that the flow consists of one current intruding into the area occupied by the other. After an initial adjustment period the intrusion becomes steadily propagating. The width of intrusion is much greater than the width of boundary curren... Abstract Alongshore migration of a western boundary current separation is investigated with a nonlinear inviscid reduced gravity model on an f plane. Separation due to a collision with an opposing current is considered. It is known that for such a case stationary collision and separation is possible only for boundary currents with “balanced” transports, that is, equal near-wall depths. The authors perturb this stationary solution with a small steplike variation of the opposing current transport and focus on the resulting time-dependent flow. Two different analytical methods to compute the migration rate are used. The first method involves integrated balances, and the second involves the path equation for the separated flow. Using the fist approach, it is found analytically that the flow consists of one current intruding into the area occupied by the other. After an initial adjustment period the intrusion becomes steadily propagating. The width of intrusion is much greater than the width of boundary curren...

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: