Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © Sears Foundation for Marine Research, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of Sears Foundation for Marine Research for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Marine Research 62 (2004): 169-193, doi:10.1357/002224004774201681.
Description:
It is well known that the barotropic, wind-driven, single-gyre ocean model reaches an inertially-dominated equilibrium with unrealistic circulation strength when the explicit viscosity is reduced to realistically low values. It is shown here that the overall circulation strength can be controlled nonlocally by retaining thin regions of enhanced viscosity parameterizing the effects of increased mixing and topographic interaction near the boundaries. The control is possible even when the inertial boundary layer width is larger than the enhanced viscosity region, as eddy fluxes of vorticity from the interior transport vorticity across the mean streamlines of the inertial boundary current to the frictional region. In relatively inviscid calculations the eddies are the major means of flux across interior mean streamlines.
Description:
B.F.-K. was supported in part by an ONR-supported NDSEG Fellowship, an MIT Presidential Fellowship,
a GFDL/Princeton University postdoctoral fellowship, and a NOAA Climate and Global Change
postdoctoral fellowship (managed by UCAR). Both authors were supported in part by NSF OCE
9910654.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Article
Format:
753053 bytes
Format:
application/pdf
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