Beschreibung: We report a study of a coastal frontal zone of the southeastern United States based on a field experiment and numerical modeling. The study was conducted in the spring of 1985 during weak to moderate wind stress and strong input of buoyancy from solar radiation and river discharge. The study confirms that the structure and slope of the frontal zone depends on a combination of wind stress and cross-shelf advection of buoyancy. A cross-shelf/depth two-dimensional (x, y), time-dependent numerical model illustrated the response of the frontal zone to the local wind stress regimes. A comparison of model results with field data showed that the model successfully predicted onsets of stratification and mixing. When alongshore wind stress was negative (southward), isopycnals in the frontal zone steepened due to a combination of horizontal advection and vertical convection. When stress was positive (northward), the offshore advection of low density water flattened the isopycnals and potential energy decreased, demonstrating that horizontal advection terms are important in the equation of conservation of buoyancy. The model predicts die offshore advection of lenses of less dense water during upwelling-favorable wind stress. These lenses are of the order of 20 km in cross-shelf scale and represent an efficient mechanism to export nearshore water. The lenses consist of a mixture of low-salinity coastal water and continental shelf water originating further offshore and advected onshore along the bottom. The mean flow inside the frontal zone opposed the mean alongshore wind stress. Part of the alongshore flow was in geostrophy with the cross-shore pressure gradient; the other part was due to an alongshore pressure gradient force (kinematic) of about 1 × 10−6 m s−2 (equivalent sea surface slope = 1 × 10−7), which was trapped along the coast with an offshore width scale of O(10 km). It is likely that the alongshore extent of this pressure gradient was governed by the scale at which freshwater is injected to the continental shelf, i.e., 20–30 km. The pressure gradient force immediately outside of the frontal zone was about −5 × 10−7 m s−2 in the direction of the mean alongshore wind stress. It is hypothesized that, as a result of wind setup and freshwater influx, the northward pressure gradient forced over outer shelf/slope by the Gulf Stream decreases in magnitude onshore, and can even change sign across a nearshore frontal zone of O(10 km). The implied flow field near the frontal zone is therefore highly three-dimensional with |∂v/∂y|≈|∂u/∂x|, where (u, v) are velocities in the cross-shore (x) and alongshore (y) directions, respectively.

Beschreibung: In a series of numerical experiments the wind-driven ocean circulation is studied in an idealized, rectangular model ocean, which is forced by steady zonal winds and damped by lateral and/or bottom friction. The problem as described by the barotropic vorticity equation is characterized by a Rossby number (R) and horizontal and/or vertical Ekman numbers (EL, EB) only. With free-slip conditions at the boundaries steady solutions for all chosen values of R are obtained, provided the diffusivity is sufficiently large. For both the forms of frictional parameterization a northern boundary current emerges with an eastward penetration scale depending on R. The recirculation pattern in the oceanically relevant ‘intermediate’ range of R is strongly affected by the type of friction. If lateral diffusion dominates bottom friction, a strong recirculating sub-gyre emerges in the northwestern corner of the basin. Its shape resembles the vertically integrated transport fields in recent eddy resolving model (EGCM) studies. The maximum transport is increased to values several times larger than the Sverdrup transport. The increase in transport is coupled with a development of closed contours of potential vorticity, enabling a nearly free inertial flow. This behaviour provides a sharp contrast to the bottom friction case (Veronis) where inertial recirculation only takes place with values of R so large that the eastward jet reaches the eastern boundary. It is shown that the linear friction law puts a strong constraint on the flow by preventing an intense recirculation in a small part of the basin. A reduction of the diffusivity (EL) in the lateral friction case leads to quasi-steady solutions. The interaction with eddies becomes an integral part of the time mean energetics but does not influence the recirculation character of the flow. The main conclusion of the study is that the horizontal structure of the EGCM-transport fields can be explained in terms of a steady barotropic model where lateral friction represents the dominant dissipation mechanism