HR: 16:30h
AN: OS52I-09    [PDF]
TI: Dynamical Forcing of the California Undercurrent
AU: * Choboter, P F
EM: pchobote@coas.oregonstate.edu
AF: Oregon State University, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, 104 Ocean Admin. Bldg., Corvallis, OR 97331 United States
AU: Allen, J S
EM: jallen@coas.oregonstate.edu
AF: Oregon State University, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, 104 Ocean Admin. Bldg., Corvallis, OR 97331 United States
AU: Samelson, R M
EM: rsamelson@coas.oregonstate.edu
AF: Oregon State University, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, 104 Ocean Admin. Bldg., Corvallis, OR 97331 United States
AU: Kindle, J C
EM: kindle@nrlssc.navy.mil
AF: Naval Research Laboratory, Building 1009, Stennis Space Center, MS 39529 United States
AB: The California Undercurrent (CUC) is a subsurface current that flows poleward off the west coast of North America even though the surface wind stress and resulting surface currents are equatorward over a significant part of the domain for much of the year. Poleward undercurrents such as this have been observed along all the major eastern oceanic boundaries of the world, which suggests that the mechanism for their generation and maintenance may be a common one. Despite this, the dynamics of these currents are not well understood. In this work, the CUC is studied by analyzing numerical simulations from the Naval Research Laboratory's primitive equation Navy Coastal Ocean Model (NCOM). NCOM is configured for the California Current System domain with 30 sigma levels in the vertical and approximately 9 km horizontal resolution, in a region extending from 30$\deg$N to 49$\deg$N latitudes and from 135$\deg$W longitude to the U.S. west coast. Boundary conditions are obtained by one-way nesting within a global version of NCOM with 1/8 degree resolution and 40 vertical levels, and surface wind forcing is obtained from the Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) 10m winds at 27 km resolution for the year 2001. The model contains features of a poleward undercurrent, although with significant spatial and temporal variability. The dynamics of the CUC in NCOM are analyzed by diagnosing dynamical balances and comparing with simplified analytical models.
DE: 4203 Analytical modeling
DE: 4255 Numerical modeling
DE: 4516 Eastern boundary currents
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2004 Ocean Sciences Meeting