Abstract

The central question discussed here is how the rate at which drifter positions are determined and the position errors affect the calculation of velocity, acceleration and velocity gradients such as divergence and vorticity. The analysis shows that the mean-square velocity and acceleration errors each are composed of two terms. One arises from the position uncertainty and the discrete sampling rate. The other term is an alias resulting from sampling a continuous velocity or acceleration spectrum discretely. Effects at low and high frequencies and sampling intervals are examined by asymptotic expansions of the spectra. Then optimum smoothing and derivative filters are obtained for the velocity and accelerations, respectively. The efficiency of these filters is determined by comparison with the errors previously established.

The calculation of divergence and vorticity from drifter clusters typically neglects the position error, in which case the errors in the velocity gradients are proportional to the velocity errors. Our analysis shows that this procedure produces estimates of the velocity gradients whose magnitudes are less than the true values. This bias is easily removed. The analysis is concluded with a derivation of formulas for unbiased estimates of the variance and covariance of the velocity gradients.

Abstract

The problem analysed here is the motion of a drifter acted on by wind, surface and subsurface currents. From the condition of static equilibrium of all drag forces acting on the drifter, the effects of wind and surface current of arbitrary direction and magnitude and drogue characteristics are examined parametrically. Specific application is made to a recently developed drifter with 9.2 and 11.85 m parachute drogues and a window shade drogue. The calculations show that for some environmental conditions the deviation between the magnitudes of the drifter velocity and the water parcel velocity may exceed 500%. Furthermore, the direction of velocity vectors may differ by as much as 45°. Drifter data from an experiment conducted by the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratories and the NOAA Data Buoy Office in the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current are examined in light of the theoretical results. The wind effects predicted by the theory were observed in the field. Thus wind corrections to the drifter velocity records which are based on the theory can significantly improve the velocity records.

Abstract

The outflow of warm, salty, and dense water from the Red Sea into the western Gulf of Aden is numerically simulated using the Hybrid Coordinate Ocean Model (HYCOM). The pathways of the modeled overflow, temperature, salinity, velocity profiles from stations and across sections, and transport estimates are compared to those observed during the 2001 Red Sea Outflow Experiment. As in nature, the simulated outflow is funneled into two narrow channels along the seafloor. The results from the three-dimensional simulations show a favorable agreement with the observed temperature and salinity profiles along the channels. The volume transport of the modeled overflow increases with the increasing distance from the southern exit of the Bab el Mandeb Strait due to entrainment of ambient fluid, such that the modeled transport shows a reasonable agreement with that estimated from the observations. The initial propagation speed of the outflow is found to be smaller than the estimated interfacial wave speed. The slow propagation is shown to result from the roughness of the bottom topography characterized by a number of depressions that take time to be filled with outflow water. Sensitivities of the results to the horizontal grid spacing, different entrainment parameterizations, and forcing at the source location are investigated. Because of the narrow widths of the approximately 5 km of the outflow channels, a horizontal grid spacing of 1 km or less is required for model simulations to achieve a reasonable agreement with the observations. Comparison of two entrainment parameterizations, namely, TPX and K-profile parameterization (KPP), show that similar results are obtained at 1-km resolution. Overall, the simulation of the Red Sea outflow appears to be more strongly affected by the details of bottom topography and grid spacing needed to adequately resolve them than by parameterizations of diapycnal mixing.

Abstract

In winter, a branch of the China Coastal Current can turn in the Taiwan Strait to join the poleward-flowing Taiwan Coastal Current. The associated cross-strait flows have been inferred from hydrographic and satellite data, from observed abundances off northwestern Taiwan of cold-water copepod species Calanus sinicus and, in late March of 2012, also from debris found along the northwestern shore of Taiwan of a ship that broke two weeks earlier off the coast of China. The dynamics related to such cross flows have not been previously explained and are the focus of this study using analytical and numerical models. It is shown that the strait’s currents can be classified into three regimes depending on the strength of the winter monsoon: equatorward (poleward) for northeasterly winds stronger (weaker) than an upper (lower) bound and cross-strait flows for relaxing northeasterly winds between the two bounds. These regimes are related to the formation of the stationary Rossby wave over the Changyun Ridge off midwestern Taiwan. In the weak (strong) northeasterly wind regime, a weak (no) wave is produced. In the relaxing wind regime, cross-strait currents are triggered by an imbalance between the pressure gradient and wind and are amplified by the finite-amplitude meander downstream of the ridge where a strong cyclone develops.

Abstract

High resolution, continuous current measurements made in the Korea/Tsushima Strait between May 1999 and March 2000 are used to examine current variations having time periods longer than 2 days. Twelve bottom-mounted acoustic Doppler current profilers provide velocity profiles along two sections: one section at the strait entrance southwest of Tsushima Island and the second section at the strait exit northeast of Tsushima Island. Additional measurements are provided by single moorings located between Korea and Tsushima Island and just north of Cheju Island in Cheju Strait. The two sections contain markedly different mean flow regimes. A high velocity current core exists at the southwestern section along the western slope of the strait for the entire recording period. The flow directly downstream of Tsushima Island contains large variability, and the flow is disrupted to such an extent by the island that a countercurrent commonly exists in the lee of the island. The northeastern section is marked by strong spatial variability and a large seasonal signal but in the mean consists of two localized intense flows concentrated near the Korea and Japan coasts. Peak nontidal currents exceed 70 cm s⁻¹ while total currents exceed 120 cm s⁻¹. The estimated mean transport calculated from the southwest line is 2.7 Sv (Sv ≡ 10⁶ m³ s⁻¹). EOF analyses indicate total transport variations in summer are due mainly to transport variations near the Korea coast. In winter, contributions to total transport variations are more uniformly distributed across the strait.

Abstract

We present an analysis of ocean surface dispersion characteristics, on 1–100-m scales, obtained by optically tracking a release of $\mathcal{O}\left(600\right)$ bamboo plates for 2 h in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Under sustained 5–6 m s⁻¹ winds, energetic Langmuir cells are clearly delineated in the spatially dense plate observations. Within 10 min of release, the plates collect in windrows with 15-m spacing aligned with the wind. Windrow spacing grows, through windrow merger, to 40 m after 20 min and then expands at a slower rate to 50 m. The presence of Langmuir cells produces strong horizontal anisotropy and scale dependence in all surface dispersion statistics computed from the plate observations. Relative dispersion in the crosswind direction initially dominates but eventually saturates, while downwind dispersion exhibits continual growth consistent with contributions from both turbulent fluctuations and organized mean shear. Longitudinal velocity differences in the crosswind direction indicate mean convergence at scales below the Langmuir cell diameter and mean divergence at larger scales. Although the second-order structure function measured by contemporaneous GPS-tracked surface drifters drogued at ~0.5 m shows persistent r ^2/3 power law scaling down to 100–200-m separation scales, the second-order structure function for the very near surface plates observations has considerably higher energy and significantly shallower slope at scales below 100 m. This is consistent with contemporaneous data from undrogued surface drifters and previously published model results indicating shallowing spectra in the presence of direct wind-wave forcing mechanisms.