An Instability Theory of Air-Sea Interaction for Coastal Upwelling

Abstract

A surface wind (seabreeze) thermally generated by differential sea surface temperature, is introduced to Gill-Clarke's model (1974) trough wind stress for investigating the effects of seabreeze on coastal upwelling A coupled air-sea system is treated as an eigenvalue problem. The solutions show that the thermally forced local winds break down the coastal Kelvin wave into three parts: small-scale (L<100 km) growing and stationary modes, mesoscale (100 km<L<200 km) decaying and fast-moving modes, and `large'-scale (L>200 km) coastal Kelvin modes The consistency of the length scale between the most growing mode predicted by this mode and the observed cold/warm alternation pattern of surface water near the Peruvian Coast (around 13 S) implies that seabreeze may play some role in coastal upwelling.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1988
Accession Number
ADA480256

Entities

People

  • Peter Cheng Chu

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Atmospheric Sciences
  • Information Operations
  • Instability
  • Sea Surface Temperature
  • Surface Temperature
  • Surface Waters
  • Upwelling
  • Wind Stress

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Modeling, Data Assimilation, and Flux Boundary Layers
  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics
  • Underwater engineering and Marine Technology.