Abstract
Due to the ubiquitous steep continental shelf slope in the East China Sea, topographic Rossby waves are very common when the Kuroshio Current flows along the slope, and of great importance in the water and energy exchange between the open ocean and coastal sea. To examine the structural characteristics of topographic Rossby wave, we use stretching transform of time and space and perturbation method to get the analytic solution of potential vorticity equation with topography. For a given background flow v = v0 + δx, the effect of background flow shear is discussed. The main conclusions are drawn that background flow shear is required for the existence of solitary Rossby waves; for flow shear δ < 0 (δ > 0), anticyclonic (cyclonic) solitary Rossby waves exist and their zonal structure tilts eastward (westward); the phase speed of solitary Rossby waves is related to the amplitude and flow shear intensity; solitary Rossby waves are non-dispersive waves, and the width of solitary waves is inversely proportional to the intensity of the flow shear. Furthermore, these theoretical results are used to explain the propagation speeds and distributions of eddies along the Kuroshio Current in the East China Sea. In addition, these results could be applied to other areas with similar meridional current and topography.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the National Key Research, Development Program of China (Grant Numbers 2017YFC1404000, 2016YFC1401601, 2017YFA0604102); the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; Grant Number XDA19060203); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Numbers 41576023, 41876019); Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of NSFC (Grant Number 41421005); NSFC-Shandong Joint Fund for Marine Science Research Centers (Grant Number U1406401); National Key Research and Development Plan Sino-Australian Center for Healthy Coasts (Grant Number 2016YFE0101500); Aoshan Sci-Tec Innovative Project of Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (Grant Number 2016ASKJ02); Strategic Pioneering Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant Numbers XDA11020104, XDA110203052); Open Fund of the Key Laboratory of Ocean Circulation and Waves, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant Number KLOCW1802); and the Startup Foundation for Introducing Talent of NUIST (Grant Number 2017r092).
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Shi, Y., Yang, D. & Yin, B. The effect of background flow shear on the topographic Rossby wave. J Oceanogr 76, 307–315 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-020-00546-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10872-020-00546-6