Energetics of Estuarine and Coastal Flow

该项目将对沿海和河口环流进行一些理论和数值分析，重点关注机械能收支。机械能（位能和动能）在沿海气流的大气、潮汐和河流强迫以及由此产生的垂直通量（通过翻转环流和湍流混合）之间形成了一个强大的概念整合工具。然而，由于不规则区域、开放边界和高度可变的强迫（因此缺乏稳定状态）的综合影响，我们目前对能量收支功能的理解在沿海和河口流动中受到严重限制。这项工作将以PI最近在河口、华盛顿和俄勒冈大陆架的能源预算工作为基础。这将大大提高对沿海上升流和河口交换流如何起作用的理论认识，以及它们对强迫条件变化的敏感性。模拟将在理想的领域和现实的西太平洋/大陆架的预测，包括哥伦比亚河和普吉特海湾。更广泛的影响：这项工作的结果将通过提供(i)对能量预算的更好的理论理解，以及（ii）改进的与ROMS一起用于能量分析的数值工具，对沿海和河口物理界有益。这项研究还将增加我们对沿海上升流、陆架和河口系统之间的联系以及依赖这些系统的生态系统的理解。这项工作将培养一名新的沿海和河口物理海洋学研究生。它将支持许多西澳大学海洋学院的学生使用的计算基础设施，作为他们研究的一个关键方面。它还将支持一个为期5周的暑期学校。

This project will conduct a number of theoretical and numerical analyses of coastal and estuarine circulation focused on the mechanical energy budget. Mechanical energy (potential and kinetic) forms a powerful conceptual integrating tool between atmospheric, tidal, and river forcing of coastal flows, and the resulting vertical fluxes (both by overturning circulation and by turbulent mixing). However, our current understanding of the functioning of the energy budget is severely limited in coastal and estuarine flows by the combined effects of irregular domains, open boundaries, and highly variable forcing (and hence the lack of a steady state). The work will build on the PI's recent work on energy budgets in estuaries and on the Washington and Oregon continental shelf. This will lead to a greatly improved theoretical understanding of how coastal upwelling and the estuarine exchange flow work, and how sensitive they may be to changes in forcing conditions. Simulations will be done in both idealized domains and for realistic hindcasts of the WA/OR shelf including the Columbia River and Puget Sound. Broader Impacts: The results of this work will be of benefit to the coastal and estuarine physics community by providing (i) a better theoretical understanding of energy budgets, and (ii) improved numerical tools to use with ROMS for energy analysis. The research will also increase our understanding of coastal upwelling, and of the linkages between shelf and estuarine systems, and hence the ecosystems which rely on these. This work will train a new graduate student in coastal and estuarine physical oceanography. It will support computational infrastructure that is used by many students at the UW School of Oceanography as a critical aspect of their research. It will also support a 5-week summer school.