Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies

Abstract: The formation of cold core filaments on an idealized continental shelf is investigated using a numerical model to simulate the ocean's response to surface cooling. A horizontal density gradient forms because of uneven buoyancy loss due to the sloping bottom, and this gradient induces an alongshelf current in thermal wind balance, that in time becomes unstable. As the instabilities grow, filaments, and later eddies, are generated so that dense water near the coast is mixed offshore. Scaling arguments of the filament wavelength indicate that the current is baroclinically unstable, and an analytical model of the frontal expansion with time is in very good agreement with the simulations. This study was inspired by satellite observations of sea surface temperature on the West Florida Shelf during the winter months, in which it is clearly seen that cold core filaments extend from a thermal front. Numerical experiments are therefore designed to allow for reliable comparisons with conditions in this region.

Abstract: The stability of a horizontally- and vertically-sheared surface jet is examined, with a focus on the vertical structure of the resultant eddies. Over a flat bottom, the instability is mixed baroclinic/barotropic, producing strong eddies at depth which are characteristically shifted downstream relative to the surface eddies. Baroclinic instability is suppressed over a large slope for retrograde jets (with a flow anti-parallel to topographic wave propagation), and to a lesser extent for prograde jets (with flow parallel to topographic wave propagation), as seen previously. In such cases, barotropic (lateral) instability dominates if the jet is sufficiently narrow. This yields surface eddies whose size is independent of the slope but proportional to the jet width. Deep eddies still form, forced by interfacial motion associated with the surface eddies, but they are weaker than under baroclinic instability and are vertically aligned with the surface eddies. A sinusoidal ridge acts similarly, suppressing baroclinic instability and favoring lateral instability in the upper layer.
A ridge with a 1 km wavelength and an amplitude of roughly 10 m is sufficient to suppress baroclinic instability. Surveys of bottom roughness from bathymetry acquired with shipboard multibeam echosounding reveal that such heights are common, beneath the Kuroshio, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and, to a lesser extent, the Gulf Stream. Consistent with this, vorticity and velocity cross sections from a 1/50° HYCOM simulation suggest that Gulf Stream eddies are vertically aligned, as in the linear stability calculations with strong topography. Thus lateral instability may be more common than previously thought, due to topography hindering vertical energy transfer.