Effects of Wind Stress and Surface Cooling on Cross-Shore Exchange

The formation of coastal dense shelf water in winter provides the available potential energy (APE) to fuel baroclinic instability. The combined effects of baroclinic instability and wind forcing in driving cross-shelf exchange are investigated using idealized numerical simulations with varied bottom slope, wind stress, and heat loss rate. The results show that under upwelling-favorable winds, the intensity of the instability decreases as the wind stress increases. This is caused primarily by enhanced turbulence frictional dissipation. Under downwelling-favorable winds, an increase in wind stress and/or a decrease in heat loss rate tends to constrain the baroclinic instability, leading to a circulation resembling that driven purely by wind forcing. In the latter case, once a critical value of cross-shore density gradient is reached, isopycnal slumping is initiated, leading to increased vertical stratification and narrowing of the inner shelf. The change in depth of the inner-shelf outer boundary, defined as the location corresponding to the maximum cross-shore gradient of the surface Ekman transport, is proportional to an empirically derived multiparametric quantity , where a2 is a dimensional constant, B0 is a constant heat loss rate, γ = 0.43, f is the Coriolis parameter, α is the shelf slope, B is the heat loss rate, and τ is the wind stress. This relationship is found to hold for cases when instabilities are present.