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- Title
Western boundary upwelling dynamics off Oman.
- Authors
Vic, Clément; Capet, Xavier; Roullet, Guillaume; Carton, Xavier
- Abstract
Despite its climatic and ecosystemic significance, the coastal upwelling that takes place off Oman is not well understood. A primitive-equation, regional model forced by climatological wind stress is used to investigate its dynamics and to compare it with the better-known Eastern Boundary Upwellings (EBUs). The solution compares favorably with existing observations, simulating well the seasonal cycles of thermal structure, surface circulation (mean and turbulent), and sea-surface temperature (SST). There is a 1.5-month lag between the maximum of the upwelling-favorable wind-stress-curl forcing and the oceanic response (minima in sea-surface height and SST), which we attribute to onshore-propagating Rossby waves. A southwestward-flowing undercurrent (opposite to the direction of the near-surface flow) is also simulated with a core depth of 1000 m, much deeper than found in EBUs (150-200 m). An EKE budget reveals that, in contrast to EBUs, the upwelling jet is more prone to barotropic than baroclinic instability and the contribution of locally-generated instabilities to EKE is higher by an order of magnitude. Advection and redistribution of EKE by standing mesoscale features also play a significant role in EKE budget.
- Subjects
OMAN; UPWELLING (Oceanography); OCEAN dynamics; OCEAN circulation; ROSSBY waves; OCEAN temperature
- Publication
Ocean Dynamics, 2017, Vol 67, Issue 5, p585
- ISSN
1616-7341
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10236-017-1044-5