Open AccessInternal tides and baroclinicity in the southern Weddell Sea: 1. Model description
Author(s) -
Robertson Robin
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: oceans
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.67
H-Index - 298
eISSN - 2156-2202
pISSN - 0148-0227
DOI - 10.1029/2000jc000475
Subject(s) - barotropic fluid , internal tide , continental shelf , geology , baroclinity , oceanography , weddell sea bottom water , internal wave , transect , water mass , climatology , sea ice , ice shelf , cryosphere
Near the continental shelf break in the southern Weddell Sea, Warm Deep Water and Western Shelf Water meet. Mixing mechanisms, such as internal tides, have the potential to mix these water masses and form Antarctic Bottom Water. A modified version of the Princeton Ocean Model was utilized to investigate the internal tidal fields generated by the interaction of the M 2 barotropic tide with topography for transects across the continental shelf and slope in the southern Weddell Sea. Internal tides were generated over the upper continental slope as predicted by linear internal wave theory. Although the essentially two‐dimensional domain resulted in differences between the model elevations and the observations exceeding the observational uncertainties, the cross‐slope velocities agreed well with differences less than the uncertainties for 78% of the existing observations.